Spain: Three migrants found dead off the coast of the Canary Islands

Three migrants were found dead in a canoe on Saturday off the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands, Spain’s maritime rescue service said. Three bodies were discovered by rescuers in the late afternoon 314 kilometers south of the island of El Hierro, a maritime rescue spokesman told AFP.

On the same boat, fifteen survivors were rescued by helicopter and taken to El Hierro island, some of them starving or in a state of hypothermia, he added, without giving further details.

Shipwrecks are a common occurrence in the Mediterranean.

Off the coast of northwest Africa, the Canary Islands archipelago is experiencing its worst migration crisis since 2006 this year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous maritime migration routes, with a dramatic rise in illegal immigrant arrivals in recent months. mainly from sub-Saharan Africa.

In October, nearly 1,500 African migrants arrived on the coast of the Canary Islands over the same weekend, rescue services in the Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco said.

The migration route through the Canary Islands has been very busy in recent years due to tighter controls in the Mediterranean. But during these long and dangerous passages on small boats from Morocco or Western Sahara, about a hundred kilometers away, and also, further south, from Mauritania, Senegal and even the Gambia, shipwrecks are common.