The dramas know no breaks in the Mediterranean. The bodies of 13 Moroccan migrants, including a woman, were recovered by Moroccan authorities on Friday after their boat sank off Mirleft in the south of the country, according to local media. 24 other migrants, including a minor, were rescued, news site Hespress said on Friday evening, citing anonymous sources in Mirleft, a coastal town in the south of the kingdom.
Hespress’s death toll of 13 could be higher as eight more people are missing. A total of 45 people were on board the makeshift boat en route to Las Palmas in Spain’s Canary Islands. They had paid between 20,000 and 25,000 dirhams (between 1,800 and 2,200 euros), reports this Arabic-language site.
According to Hespress, the boat struck a rock and “capsized about 10 minutes later” as it left shore. Located on the northwestern tip of Africa, Morocco is a transit country for many migrants, especially people from sub-Saharan Africa trying to reach Europe from the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts.
More than 11,200 migrants have died or disappeared trying to reach Spain since 2018, an average of six a day, according to a report by Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.