MADRID ( Another 27 people are feared dead after a boat crossing the Atlantic Ocean on its way from North Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has become a trap for migrants seeking to succeed on European soil, the Spanish government and activists said Tuesday.
The Spanish delegation to the Canary Islands said rescuers recovered 32 survivors and a frame overnight from an inflatable boat in the waters south of Fuerteventura, the closest of the islands to the archipelago off the African coast.
Survivors told the government that about sixty more people were on board when the ship set sail 4 days ago from a beach near southern Morocco, the town of Tan-Tan.
Walking Borders, a nonprofit that works with threatened migrants and provides assistance to their relatives, said its studies indicated the ship had carried only 42 other people when it left Morocco, killing up to 10 other people.
The organization, which has one of the first contact issues for African families looking to locate their loved ones at the other end of the migration route, says more than 2,000 people have died so far this year on their way to the Canary Islands. The Atlantic Route is one of the most damaging sea crossings for Europe.
“The human rights crisis at the border demands an urgent political response,” Walking Borders founder Helena Maleno said in a tweet to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration has shown the deaths this year of 529 migrants seeking to succeed in Spain’s island chain, however, the firm says the number does not reflect the actual death toll as other people pass through the sea without ever passing. or make their bodies found.
Survivors of failed crossings also reported that the bodies of the passengers were dumped into the sea before rescuers arrived.
Walking Borders said Monday that at least 29 Africans, totaling seven children, died in a boat that in the midst of a rescue on Aug. 27, a total of 25 adults and one minor survived.
Alarm Phone, a network of volunteers that is also helping migrants who find themselves in misery at sea, said Tuesday that interviews with survivors led the organization to believe that at least 14 of the other 46 people on some other boat did not cross the Atlantic after a sudden change and strong winds drove the shipment away from the archipelago.
Nine of those affected died during the 15 days the ship’s occupants spent at sea without fuel, food or water, Alarm Phone said on its website. Four others died while seeking to board a merchant ship that came to the rescue after the Spanish government requested its help And a woman suffering from diabetes did not make the long adventure to the port of Las Palmas, the organization said.
Alarm Phone has detected a 47% increase in the death rate in the Atlantic direction between August 1 and 20.
“Incredibly long journeys in this direction can take from days to weeks and put travelers in very precarious conditions,” he said.
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