Four dead as latest migrant boat capsizes off Canary Islands

People are brought ashore after a boat with about 35 migrants

At least four people died when a boat carrying about 30 migrants sank off Spain’s Canary Islands on Tuesday night, emergency services have said.

On Wednesday morning, the Canarias7 newspaper reported that more bodies had been recovered and that the death toll stood at seven, with 28 people rescued out of an estimated 35 migrants from North Africa on board the boat that crashed into rocks near the harbour of Órzola on the island of Lanzarote.

The tragedy is the latest chapter in a huge increase of migrant boats heading across the Atlantic to the archipelago from Africa as Mediterranean routes have been restricted this year.

More than 18,000 migrants have arrived in the Canaries in 2020 already, ten times more than last year. The official death toll reflecting bodies found by Spanish emergency services stood at 37 at the end of October, but the real figure is likely to be far higher.

According to data provided by the International Migration Organization (IMO) updated to October 31, for every 24 people who reach their destination in the Canaries one drowns along the way.

Rescue workers carry the body of a dead person

In Arguineguín, a port in the south of Gran Canaria island, hundreds of migrants remain in cramped conditions in a camp on the dockside which housed more than 2,000 people earlier this month, rescue services continue to bring in boats. Between Monday and Tuesday more than 300 migrants arrived from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa.

Onalia Bueno, the local mayor, is pushing Spain’s government to close the camp because of what she described as its “inhuman” conditions.

“There are rodents, the migrants sleep on the floor with no mattresses, the chemical toilets are cleaned out once a week but the stink is so bad people go elsewhere for their needs and many have developed scabies here in the camp,” Ms Bueno told The Telegraph.

Spain’s government has built a temporary camp on a military site near Las Palmas, the island’s capital, with bunks and a planned capacity for 800 migrants, but around 6,000 have been housed in hotels around the island as local authorities ask Madrid to transfer greater numbers to the mainland.