Valverde, Spain (EFE) — The bodies of nine migrants have been recovered by Spanish emergency services in El Hierro in the Canary Islands, officials said Saturday, while at least 50 are missing.
The migrants’ boat capsized on Friday night near the Spanish coast, emergency officials on El Hierro told EFE, adding that 27 people had been rescued.
MORE NEWS : Central Europe faces more deadly flooding, Poland declares disaster, death toll may rise
The boat apparently capsized during the rescue operation, sources from the island’s emergency services told EFE, amid adverse weather conditions and wind gusts of around 37 kilometers per hour.
The officials also said that two of the 27 people who were rescued had been brought to hospital by helicopter. The remaining 25 have been transferred to La Restinga, on El Hierro.
All of the small boat’s occupants were male. One of the dead was an adolescent boy, aged between 12 to 15, officials said.
The boat had left Mauritania for the Canary Islands, a relative of one of the occupants told the NGO Caminando Fronteras (Spanish for ‘Walking Borders’).
The NGO, which was created in 2002 to defend migrants’ rights, were alerted on Friday night that several passengers aboard the small boat were calling their families to say that they could see the Spanish coast and that the engine of the boat had stopped.
According to the relative who called the NGO, there were at least four children between 7 and 11 years old aboard the boar, in addition to several teenagers.
Spain’s Civil Guard and Coast Guard were searching the area around Las Playas for more bodies.
Three boats arrived at El Hierro on Friday night, including the one that capsized. A search for a fourth boat is ongoing.
The first boat was carrying 131 people – 107 men and 15 women, as well as five children and four babies – El Hierro emergency workers said. The second boat was the one that capsized, while the third arrived on Saturday morning with 20 people aboard.
The Atlantic route from the west coast of Africa to the Canary Islands is considered by the United Nations to be the most dangerous in the world; 702 people died attempting the crossing in the first seven months of 2024. EFE