Spanish rescuers
are searching waters off the Canary Islands for a boat carrying at least 200
African migrants who went missing more than a week ago.
The aid group
Walking Borders says the fishing boat sailed from Kafountine, a coastal town in
southern Senegal that is roughly 1,700km (1,057 miles) from Tenerife.
The group says
many children are on board, Spain's Efe news agency reports.
Your shortcut to breathtaking Presentations
Two similar
boats carrying dozens more people are also said to be missing.
Spain's maritime
rescue service told Efe that a plane had joined the search.
The boat with
200 people on board left Kafountine on 27 June, heading for the Canary Islands.
There are few
details about the other two boats, however Reuters news agency quoted Helena
Maleno of Walking Borders as saying that one has about 65 people on board, the
other up to 60. That would bring the total number of people missing across the
three boats to more than 300.
Your shortcut to breathtaking Presentations
The news comes
just weeks after Europe saw one of its worst Mediterranean migrant
shipwrecks, when an overcrowded trawler sank off the Greek coast.
At least 78
people were confirmed drowned, but the United Nations (UN) reported that up to
500 were still missing.
The voyage from
West Africa to the Canary Islands is among the most dangerous routes for
migrants, not least because they usually sail in simple dugout fishing boats
that are easily tossed by powerful Atlantic currents.
Last year at
least 559 people died at sea attempting to reach the Spanish islands, the UN's
International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says. The death toll for 2021
was 1,126.
The IOM quotes
Spain's Interior Ministry as saying 15,682 people arrived irregularly in the
Canary Islands in 2022, a decrease of 30% compared to 2021.
"Despite
the year-to-year decrease, flows along this dangerous route since 2020 remain
high compared to prior years," the IOM says.
0 comments:
Post a Comment