The sinking of a migrant boat left at least nine dead and 48 missing in the night from Friday to Saturday near the Canaries, a new drama on the “Atlantic route” between Africa and Europe, where thousands of people have already died.
The shipwreck took place about 4 nautical miles (about 7 km) south of the port of La Estaca, on the island of El Hierro, one of the islands of the Spanish archipelago, according to Spanish maritime rescue services.
In total, 84 people were present on the boat, from where a call for help was made at 12:14 a.m. local time during the night, the same source said. Twenty-seven people were rescued, nine bodies were found, and 48 people were missing and wanted, according to a press release.
“During the rescue operations, the canoe capsized when its occupants concentrated on one of the sides,” they add. The emergency services underline the “difficulty of a rescue which occurred at night and in unfavorable weather conditions with wind gusts of around 20 knots”.
At the beginning of September, the sinking of a migrant boat trying to reach Europe had already left at least 39 dead off the coast of Senegal.
Thousands of migrants have lost their lives in recent years attempting the perilous Atlantic route to reach Europe from Africa, mainly via the Spanish Canary Islands, aboard crowded and often dilapidated boats.
“Unfortunately, a new tragedy once again highlights the danger of the Atlantic Route,” reacted the president of the Canary Islands region, Fernando Clavijo, on the social network X.
“We need Spain and the EU to act decisively in the face of a structural humanitarian drama. These are children, women and men. Lives that are extinguished a few meters from the southern border of Europe,” lamented Mr. Clavijo.
Since August 28, 1994 and the arrival of two young Sahrawis aboard a simple boat in the Spanish archipelago of the Canaries – the symbolic birth date of what is called in Spain the “Canary route”, some 200,000 migrants have took this route to reach Europe, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.
Agreements with Mauritania and Gambia
At the end of August, Spain signed agreements with Mauritania and the Gambia to strengthen cooperation against smugglers of illegal migrants to Europe and in favor of regulated migration, during a tour by the Spanish Prime Minister.
As of August 15, 22,304 migrants had arrived in the Canaries since the start of the year, compared to 9,864 for the same period in 2023, an increase of 126%. For Spain as a whole, the increase is 66% (from 18,745 to 31,155).
In 2023, nearly 40,000 migrants (39,910) entered the Canaries, a record which should be beaten again this year, because the improvement in navigation conditions from September generally results each year in a sharp increase in crossings at the end of the year. The president of the Canary Islands region expects the number of arrivals to exceed the threshold of 50,000 this year.
However, this maritime route between Africa and the Canaries is also a real “road of death”, because the crossings are made aboard crowded boats poorly equipped to withstand the currents, which are very strong in this area of the Atlantic and which cause numerous shipwrecks. Some boats depart from places a thousand kilometers from the Canary Islands.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, at least 4,857 people have died or disappeared on this maritime route since 2014.
But the real figure is undoubtedly much higher. Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish NGO which helps migrants and assesses the number of victims based on the testimonies of survivors, estimates that 18,680 people paid with their lives for their desire to reach Europe.