80 Dead on Migrant Boat Off Canary Islands
80 Dead on Migrant Boat Off Canary Islands
The News
At least 80 migrants, including a baby, are dead after a boat that set out from Gambia was found drifting off Spain's Canary Islands with only 45 people still alive.
Spanish coastguards reached the overpacked vessel about 75 miles south of Gran Canaria overnight, according to the Daily Mail, which reported the boat left Gambia 27 days ago carrying 128 people. The Independent, citing Spain's EFE news agency, put the time adrift at 26 days.
Five bodies were still aboard when rescuers arrived. The rest of the dead are believed to have been lost at sea.
Timeline
the boat, described by a migrant rights group as a cayuco, leaves Gambia with 128 people on board, according to the Daily Mail and the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.
the alarm is raised over a vessel adrift off the Canary Islands, the Daily Mail reported.
the rescue operation begins in rough seas some 75 miles south of Gran Canaria.
survivors are landed at Arguineguín Port on Gran Canaria. Three of them are airlifted to two hospitals on the island.
Reactions
Helena Maleno Garzón, a Spanish-Moroccan journalist and researcher with the NGO Caminando Fronteras, put the toll at 83 in a post on X: "Eighty-three people have died, among them three women and a baby, on a cayuco boat that left Gambia 27 days ago."
"The survivors have been taken to Gran Canaria. May their souls rest in peace," she added.
Spain's Civil Guard told Caminando Fronteras the boat had likely come from Gambia based on inscriptions on its hull, The Independent reported.
What's Next
Spanish authorities have not released a confirmed death toll, and the count of those lost at sea rests for now on the account of Caminando Fronteras. Survivors were being treated on Gran Canaria, three of them in hospital.
More
The Canary Islands are a long-running entry point to Europe for migrants leaving West Africa and Morocco. Some experts consider the Atlantic crossing deadlier than the better-known central Mediterranean route from Libya and Tunisia to Italy.
Arrivals in the Canaries peaked in 2024 at nearly 47,000, according to the Daily Mail. The International Organization for Migration's Missing Migrants Project has recorded about 6,600 deaths on the Atlantic route since it began counting in 2014 — a figure the project concedes is a heavy undercount because so many wrecks are never found. The Spanish group Walking Borders estimates more than 25,000 people have died or gone missing trying to reach the islands since 2020.
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