The Spanish coast guard was searching on Thursday for about 50 Africans whose wooden boat capsized as the would-be illegal migrants neared the end of a dangerous voyage to the Canary Islands, officials said.
Coast guard boats picked up 48 survivors after their narrow boat overturned about 142km south-west of the resort island of Tenerife, a representative of Spain’s central government on the islands said.
Two merchant ships joined four coast guard vessels, a helicopter and a plane in the search after the boat overturned early on Thursday in heavy seas, the official said.
Authorities believe thousands of Africans died last year attempting to reach the Canaries, hundreds of kilometres from the African coast. Most disappeared at sea without trace, bodies sometimes washing up days later on African shores.
The capsized boat was a wooden craft known in Spain as a ”cayuco”. Often brightly painted, they are powered by outboard motors and their bare hulls offer little shelter to occupants who sometimes die of hypothermia.
”We’re talking about a very fragile craft,” said the director general of the Spanish police, Joan Mesquida, explaining how survivors were plucked from the sea.
The number of boats ferrying migrants to the Canaries, Spain’s southernmost territory, has fallen sharply this year after the Spanish government stepped up repatriations of illegal migrants and the European Union started maritime patrols.
About 35 000 migrants made it to the Canaries last year, making illegal immigration one of Spain’s biggest political issues. – Reuters