55 migrants found dead off coast of Spain’s Canary Islands

By Alyssa Mcmurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - At least 55 people died trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands in boats from the coast of Africa over the weekend, the Spanish news agency EFE reported Sunday.

The Spanish coast guard also rescued 1,786 people making the voyage on one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world.

The worst tragedy took place on a wooden ship that had left from the north of Mauritania nearly three weeks before it was found drifting 370 kilometers (229 miles) south of the Spanish island of El Hierro on Saturday.

When the Spanish coast guard arrived, only 10 people remained onboard. They said the boat originally had 58 passengers, but the rest had died and been thrown overboard.

Then on Sunday afternoon, a dinghy sank 90 kilometers (56 miles) off the coast of the island of Lanzarote. The coast guard recovered five bodies but managed to save 17 people after launching a raft from an airplane.

That same mission rescued 80 migrants who were having problems in a nearby dinghy.

In another operation, authorities recovered the body of a woman who had fallen from a dinghy that was beginning to deflate. The other 54 people on the dinghy were rescued.

Besides the deaths at sea, another migrant who arrived at El Hierro died in a local hospital Sunday from injuries sustained during her travels.

In total, EFE reported that of the rescued migrants, 815 were taken to the island of Lanzarote, 754 went to El Hierro. 157 to Fuerteventura and 60 to Tenerife.

For months, the Canary Island government has been clamoring for help dealing with the influx of migrants. Many of the region’s centers for young migrants are overflowing.

According to the Interior Ministry, more than 45,000 migrants crossed irregularly into Spain from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15 this year.

Of those, nearly 33,000 arrived by sea to the Canary Islands, an archipelago with a population of 2.2 million people.

According to the non-governmental organization Walking Borders, an estimated 5,054 people died on the journey during the first five months of the year.