Spanish authorities are conducting a search operation off the Canary Islands for a fishing boat carrying more than 200 African migrants.
It has been missing for more than a week. The boat, which departed from Kafountine in southern Senegal, roughly 1,057 miles from Tenerife, on June 27, was reportedly carrying many children, according to Spain’s Efe news agency.
Two other boats carrying dozens more people have also gone unaccounted for, taking the potential toll of those missing in the incident up to more than 300.
Spanish rescue operations have deployed a plane to help with the search and rescue mission after more than a week.
Walking Borders, an aid group, said the fishing boat was carrying many children when it went missing.
Helena Maleno, an employee of the charity organisation, said two more boats carrying around 60 and 65 people respectively were also missing.
The lengthy voyage from West Africa to the Canary Islands is among the most dangerous routes for migrants.
The journey is roughly 41 times further than a boat trip from the French city of Calais to Dover and they are often made on simple dugout fishing boats that are easily tossed by the powerful Atlantic currents.
Last year at least 559 people died at sea attempting to reach the Spanish islands, the United Nations’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says. The death toll for 2021 was 1,126.
The IOM quotes Spain’s Interior Ministry as saying 15,682 people arrived irregularly in the Canary Islands in 2022, a decrease of 30 percent compared to 2021.
“Despite the year-to-year decrease, flows along this dangerous route since 2020 remain high compared to prior years,” the IOM says.
The search and rescue mission follows a devastating incident in the Mediterranean Sea, where an overcrowded trawler capsized off the Greek coast.
At least 78 deaths have been confirmed dead but the UN reported that up to 500 people remained missing.
The Adriana departed for Italy early on June 9 from a port in eastern Libya. Four days later, off the Greek coast, the first distress signals were made.
In the hours that followed, the boat capsized after receiving a tow from Greek officials.
