Nine people are confirmed drowned and at least 48 are missing after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Spain’s Canary Islands overnight, rescue services said Saturday, the latest in a series of such disasters off the west coast of Africa.
Sea rescue teams said in a statement they had answered a distress call off El Hierro, one of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago, shortly after midnight. They managed to save 27 people out of 84 on board.
Anselmo Pestana, head of the Canary Islands prefecture, said survivors had told their rescuers that the boat had set off from Nuadibu in Mauritania, some 800 kilometres (nearly 500 miles) away.
They also suggested that there might have been as many as 90 people on board. Four of those rescued were minors, he added.
Pestana was speaking from the port of La Estaca, on El Hierro island.
The most critical part of the operation was when the rescue vessels approached the boat in distress, he told journalists, because it was vital that those on board the stricken craft stay calm.
They had to follow the instructions of the rescue crews to ensure their vessel stayed balanced and did not capsize, he added.
But as the migrants had gone two days without food or water, that probably contributed to the panic and the boat capsizing, he said.
Five ships, three helicopters and one plane had taken part in the search and rescue operation, he added.
– Record numbers arriving –
This disaster follows the death of 39 migrants in early September when their boat sank off Senegal while attempting a similar crossing to the Canaries, from where migrants hope to reach mainland Europe.
Thousands of migrants have died in recent years setting off into the Atlantic to reach Europe onboard overcrowded and often dilapidated boats.
The latest tragedy “again underlines the dangerousness of the Atlantic route”, Canaries regional president Fernando Clavijo wrote on X.
“We need Spain and the EU to act decisively in the face of a structural humanitarian tragedy” as lives are lost “metres from Europe’s southern border”, he added.
In late August, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Mauritania and The Gambia to sign cooperation agreements to crack down on people smugglers while expanding legal means of immigration.
As of August 15, 22,304 migrants have reached the Canaries since the start of the year, up from 9,864 in the same period the previous year.
Almost 40,000 migrants entered the Canaries in 2023, a record on course to be broken this year, as easier navigation conditions from September tend to lead to a spike in crossing attempts.
The Atlantic route is particularly deadly, with many of the crowded and poorly equipped boats unable to cope with the strong ocean currents. Some boats set off from African beaches as far as 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the Canaries.
The International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, estimates that 4,857 people have died on this route since 2014.
Many aid organisations say that is a massive underestimate. Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish NGO that aids migrants, says 18,680 have died trying to reach Europe.
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