A migrant boat with at least 11 people on board has sunk on the way to the Canary Islands from the African continent. The body of a small child was recovered by the Moroccan authorities, along with those of 10 adults.
On Monday, (April 10) the organization Alarm Phone, which monitors migrant journeys towards Europe, retweeted a news report from Spain. The report said that at least 11 people had died after their boat sank on the way to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean.
The deaths were also reported on April 8 in brief by the French news agency Agence France Presse AFP.
Child under two among those dead
"Among the people who died was a child of just two years old," said the local Tenerife newspaper Diario de Avisos in its report about the incident. According to the newspaper, the boat was found off the coast of Morocco, near the coastal town of Guelmim, one of the parts of the country where the greatest number of migrants attempt to make their journey across the Atlantic ocean.
The boat is thought to have got into difficulty on Saturday, reported a Moroccan online portal Alyaoum 24, reported Diario de Avisos. The Moroccan authorities started to recover the bodies soon after. Among the victims, reports Diario de Avisos, are eight Moroccan nationals, including one woman and seven men, as well as three sub-Saharaian African migrants, including a little boy of less than two years.
The Moroccan authorities are looking into what happened, and have opened an investigation, reported Diario de Avisos. They want to try and identify those responsible for putting the boat to sea.
More than 11,000 deaths on Canary route since 2018
The Spanish human rights organization Caminando Fronteras has estimated that more than 11,200 migrants have died or disappeared after leaving the coasts of Morocco to try and make it to Spain since 2018.
Over the Easter weekend, the Spanish coast guard and rescue services said they had rescued around 145 migrants who had made it to or near the coast of the Canary Islands. Three major rescue operations were carried out over Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning, reported Diario de Avisos. In all, 141 men, two women and two children were brought ashore. All are reported to be in good health, wrote Diario de Avisos. The majority of those brought ashore were described as being from North Africa.
The regional broadcaster Radio Television Canaria RTVC reported that the rescues lasted for about 12 hours, beginning at about 21.00 on Saturday night, and continuing until about 09.00 on Sunday morning. They were coordinated by the central rescue authorities in Las Palmas.
Three rescue operations
The first boat, which had about 50 migrants on board, including 48 men, one woman and a minor, was found a few miles off the coast in Spanish waters. The second boat, carrying 53 people, including 52 men and one woman, was found in international waters. The third boat, carrying 41 men and one minor, was also found just inside Spanish waters.
All the migrants, said the reporter, had been brought to the port of Arrecife and were being helped by the emergency services and the Spanish Red Cross. Three of the migrants had to be taken to a local hospital to treat "light injuries,” reported RTVC.
Overall, since the beginning of the year, reported the Spanish newspaper El Diario, the numbers of migrants arriving on the Canary Islands is down on the same period in 2022. Between January 1 and March 31 2023, 2,178 people arrived on the islands of the archipelago. In 2022, a total of 5,940 people arrived in the same time period on 123 different boats.
However, the numbers of those attempting the Mediterranean route to mainland Spain or the Spanish Balearic islands has slightly risen. According to Ministry of Interior figures, reported in El Diario, the numbers of arrivals in those parts of Spain is up 15.7% on last year, with a total number of arrivals registered as 1,841 on 176 different boats.