Dozens of migrants are believed to have died when a wooden boat sank off the coast of the Canary Island of El Hierro. According to the Spanish maritime emergency service, there is still no trace of the at least 48 missing people.
Nine bodies were recovered on Saturday evening after the accident. Only 27 of at least 84 prisoners were rescued, including four minors.
Search operations resumed after dawn. The maritime emergency service announced on X that three ships and three helicopters would be deployed. However, hopes of rescuing some of the missing people alive quickly diminished. On Saturday, spokespeople for the emergency services admitted that hope was minimal.
The open wooden boat carrying at least 84 migrants from Africa capsized around one o’clock on Saturday morning during a rescue operation almost four nautical miles (more than seven kilometers) south of La Restinga on the westernmost Canary Island of El Hierro.
As the rescue effort approached, the boat capsized
The accident occurred when too many migrants moved to one side of the boat as a rescue cruiser approached, the report said. It must be assumed that the death toll could be around 60 if no one is rescued.
Those rescued were said to be completely exhausted, dehydrated and hypothermic. The people in the accident boat were left without water or food for two days, said the representative of the central government in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana. They should drink salt water.
The desperate situation probably led to panic in the crowded boat when the occupants saw the rescue ship in the middle of the night. Survivors said the boat left a week ago from Nouadhibou in western Mauritania, about 750 kilometers as the crow flies from El Hierro.
The numbers increased significantly
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), almost 30,000 refugees have reached the Canary Islands from Africa this year. That was considerably more than in the same period last year. The boats depart from the coast of West Africa between Guinea in the south and Morocco in the north.
Spanish aid agency Caminando Fronteras estimates that around 4,800 people drowned or died of exhaustion during the long crossing between January and the end of May.
Source: Krone
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