2023-12-31 02:14:28
Three migrants were found dead in a canoe on Saturday off the coast of the Spanish Canary Islands, Spanish maritime rescue announced. Three bodies were discovered by rescuers late in the afternoon 314 kilometers south of the island of El Hierro, a maritime rescue spokesperson told AFP.
On this same boat, fifteen survivors were rescued by helicopter and transported to the island of El Hierro, some of them starving or in a state of hypothermia, he added, without further details. .
Shipwrecks are common in the Mediterranean
Located off the coast of northwest Africa, the Canary Islands archipelago is facing its worst migration crisis since 2006 this year, making it one of the most dangerous maritime migration routes in the world, with a spectacular increase in arrivals of illegal immigrants in recent months, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa.
In October, nearly 1,500 African migrants arrived on the coasts of the Canary Islands during the same weekend, announced the rescue services of the Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco.
The migration route through the Canaries has been very busy in recent years due to the tightening of controls in the Mediterranean Sea. But shipwrecks are frequent during these long and dangerous crossings aboard small boats from Morocco or Western Sahara, about a hundred kilometers away, but also, further south, from Mauritania, Senegal and even Gambia. .
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