4 Dead, Many Missing As Boat Sinks off Canary Islands

4 Dead, Many Missing As Boat Sinks off Canary Islands

The boat was carrying 34 migrants, according to a Spanish NGO that aids unauthorized immigrants, but only a 26-year-old guy from the Ivory Coast made it out alive.

A merchant ship found the boat 150 miles (or around 240 kilometers) southwest of the island of Gran Canaria, according to the Salvamento Maritimo coastguard on Sunday.

The migrants were being transported to Las Palmas, the capital of the island, and were scheduled to arrive on Monday.

The leader of the Spanish nonprofit organization Caminando Fronteras, Helena Maleno, posted on Twitter that her group had received a warning about a boat leaving the area of Laayoune on September 24. Caminando Fronteras assists migrant boats in distress at sea and works with families looking for missing loved ones.

The organization, whose name translates in English as “Walking Borders,” reported the alert to the authorities at the time.

“Seven days of pain and waiting in which there was no news. Seven days that ended yesterday with the announcement of a new tragedy in one of the deadliest migration routes, the Canary Islands,” Maleno wrote on Twitter.

Maleno calculated the remainder of this sunken boat’s victims to stand at 29. She said their families likely would not even be able to recover their bodies, which had most likely been “swallowed by the ocean.”

The migration route across the Atlantic from West Africa to the Canary Islands has reportedly been one of the worst in the world.

Every year, thousands of people undertake the journey from sub-Saharan and northwest Africa in quest of greener, better pastures, unfazed by the fragility of the boats that carry them or the demise of their forebears.

Such expeditions are more dangerous because of the Atlantic Ocean’s very strong currents.

According to statistics released on September 15 by the Spanish Interior Ministry, over 11,500 migrants have entered the Canary Islands this year. The amount is a little higher than it was during this time last year.

According to Maleno’s NGO, more than 900 migrants who were trying to reach Spain in the first half of this year drowned or went missing at sea.