Photo credit: Evening Standard
A rescue ship rescued 68 migrants and found five bodies in a traditional fishing boat that was drifting off the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
AP reports that an oil tanker travelling from northwestern Spain to Brazil found the drifting boat on Wednesday afternoon about 815 kilometres south of Tenerife, an island in the Canaries archipelago.
Spanish authorities diverted the Insignia, a cruise ship, to rescue the migrants. The Insignia crew also recovered three of the five bodies on the fishing boat. The corpses of two people were left at sea because of the bad weather hampering their recovery.
It is unusual for cruise ships to rescue migrants on the Atlantic route, but according to a maritime rescue spokesperson, the pirogue “was a long way out, and they could be in danger.”
Fishermen in Mauritania and Senegal use canoe-shaped boats known as pirogues.
Steve Dilbeck, a passenger on the cruise ship, said, “They did say the boat had been at sea for 20 days. We were diverted in the evening, and reaching them took us two hours. They were brought on board and placed in the Insignia Lounge, where they have all their shows.
The area has been closed off to passengers. Told they had them remove their clothes and put on jumpsuits. Then they asked passengers if they had shous and clothes they could donate, particularly for men. Their announcement said 62 were men, with the rest women and children.”
Spain’s Interior Ministry said a record 55,618 migrants arrived by boat last year, almost double the number of the previous year. More than 23,000 have landed so far this year.
The Spanish nonprofit organization Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) says more than 5,000 migrants have died so far this year through May while trying to reach Spanish coasts, most of them on the Atlantic route. The figure for all 2023 was 6,600, more than double the number for 2022.
