The search resumes for 48 lacking migrants off the Spanish Canary Islands

A Spanish Maritime Rescue (Maritime Search and Rescue Company) vessel tows a ship after 3 “cayuco” boats with round 180 individuals on board arrived on the port of La Restinga on the Canary Island of El Hierro, within the early hours of the nineteenth. September 2024 | Picture credit score: AFP

Rescue groups on Sunday (September 29, 2024) resumed the seek for at the least 48 migrants who went to sea yesterday when their boat capsized simply as they had been rescuing him off Spain’s Canary Islands, killing at the least to 9 individuals.

Hopes of discovering survivors had been slim as sea rescue groups searched the waters off El Hierro, an island within the Atlantic archipelago.

It’s the newest in a sequence of such disasters off the coast of Africa.

“The search operation is resumed,” reported the Spanish maritime rescue group AFP.

All 48 are “presumed lifeless,” Canary Islands regional president Fernando Clavijo informed reporters on Saturday evening.

Extra our bodies are more likely to seem “within the subsequent two or three days,” carried by the present, he added.

Twenty-seven migrants had been rescued and 9 our bodies recovered after the boat, which had left Nouadhibou in Mauritania, about 800 kilometers (virtually 500 miles) away, capsized off El Hierro.

The tragedy occurred when rescuers arrived to assist the migrants after they themselves referred to as emergency companies, Spanish officers mentioned.

The migrants ran to the aspect of the precarious boat, inflicting it to capsize.

The migrants “had been with out meals or water for 2 days,” which can have fueled their panic, Anselmo Pestana, head of the Canary Islands prefecture, informed reporters on the port of La Estaca.

Spanish authorities sources mentioned the ship might have carried as much as 90 individuals, as an alternative of 84 as initially introduced, which might increase the variety of lacking to greater than 50.

This catastrophe follows the deaths of 39 migrants in early September when their boat sank off Senegal whereas trying an identical crossing to the Canary Islands, from the place the migrants hope to succeed in continental Europe.

1000’s of migrants have died lately leaving West Africa to succeed in Europe throughout the Atlantic aboard overcrowded and infrequently dilapidated ships.