Three migrant boats from Senegal to Spain’s Canary Islands are believed to have at least 300 missing passengers.
Last month, two boats departed Kafountine, a town more than 1,000 miles away from Tenerife, with one transporting at least 65 people and the other close to 60.
According to the Spanish immigrant aid organisation Caminando Fronteras, popularly known as Walking Borders, both had been gone for 15 days.
According to the group’s Helena Malenco, a third ship—a fishing boat carrying 200 people—left Kafountine on June 27 and hasn’t been seen since.
Many children are on board, Malenco said, and none of the passengers’ loved ones have heard from them since their departure.
‘The families are very worried. There are about 300 people from the same area of Senegal,’ she said.
‘They have left because of the instability.’
Spain’s sea search and rescue agency, Salvamento Marítimo, has launched a search operation involving a plane, a spokesperson said.
The Sasemar 101 aircraft was launched this morning and ‘it has been reported that they have found a boat that might be the one we were looking for, 71 miles south Gran Canaria’.
The plane crew has counted some 200 people on board the boat.
‘We have mobilized one of our vessels, called Guardamar Caliope, in order to proceed to the rescue,’ the agency spokesperson added.
‘Moreover, a merchant vessel that was nearby has been mobilised to give support to the operation.’
The Canary Islands Route, also called the Western Africa-Atlantic Route, is among the ‘deadliest’ for people fleeing persecution, poverty, natural disaster and worse from sub-Saharan Africa, according to Caminando Fronteras.
Many brave choppy waters and extreme weather conditions of the Atlantic which can cause their boats, typically dugout wooden boats, to drift off course.
The route can find migrants at sea for days, or even weeks.
Migrants often have no other choice but to undertake these perilous journeys, with safe routes offered by other nations being few and far between and some nations beefing up military controls along their coastlines.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that at least 559 people – including 22 children – died in 2022 while attempting the voyage.
More than 7,600 people have died trying to reach the Canary Islands in the last five years, the Caminando Fronteras says.
The IOM warns that the real death toll is likely far higher – and it has steadily risen year after year.
Even when boats are reported in distress, how many people were on board can be tricky to tally, the IOM says, which only complicates rescue efforts.
‘Militarisation, deportation and violence against migrant communities continue to characterise this route, which has proven to be the deadliest of them all in recent years,’ Caminando Fronteras adds.
Salvamento Marítimo said