A tragedy has hit the migratory route to the Canary Islands at dawn. At least nine people have died in a canoe trying to reach El Hierro, as reported by 1-1-2. There are also “dozens” of missing people.
The Emergency Service alerted at 12:17 a.m. of the sighting of a boat with migrants four miles from La Restinga. The canoe capsized and Maritime Rescue and the rescue helicopter were activated. At the moment, 27 survivors have been rescued and nine have died. However, as this newspaper has learned, many more people were traveling on the barge and are still missing. The first estimates suggest that this is the greatest migratory tragedy that has occurred in the Canary Islands.
All the occupants of the overturned canoe were men and one of the bodies recovered corresponds to that of a teenager between 12 and 15 years old, according to EFE, which cites sources from the island’s emergency services, which also specify that of the 27 people who have been saved, 25 were transferred to La Restinga and two have been evacuated by helicopter.
Likewise, they have detailed that the occupants of the canoe itself were the ones who notified 112 of where they were and that the rescue occurred around 3 in the morning.
There were 84 men on the boat, several of them teenagers, who had left for the Canary Islands from Mauritania, according to what a relative of one of the occupants told Caminando Fronteras.
This NGO received a call last night at 1:30 a.m. from this person in which he said that several of the passengers of the canoe were calling their families to say that they saw the coast and that their engine had stopped. According to this relative, at least four children between 7 and 11 years old were traveling on the boat, in addition to the teenagers.
At this time, members of the Civil Guard and Maritime Rescue are in the Las Playas area looking for more bodies.
In total, three canoes arrived in El Hierro last night, including the one that capsized, and a search is underway for a fourth vessel that they have not been able to locate at the moment. In the first one that arrived in La Restinga at midnight, a total of 131 people were traveling, including 107 men and 15 women, as well as five children and four babies, according to the same emergency sources. The second corresponds to the nine dead and 50 missing and the third arrived around 7:30 a.m. with 20 people, including 18 men, a woman and a child.
Ten people from the three cayucos received health care in the port of La Restinga. Also last night, a boat was rescued in Lanzarote with 57 people, three of them women, who were transferred to Puerto Naos.
Source: www.eldiario.es
