The Spanish rescue service found a boat off Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands with three dead migrants on board and 45 others, some of them very malnourished, the coast guard said.
Rescuers in Salvamento Maritimo rescued a stranded boat off the island of Fuerteventura shortly after midnight, a spokesman said. He explained that the crew found 45 survivors, including 42 men, two women and a child, and three bodies. “All those rescued are Moroccans, with the exception of the man from sub-Saharan Africa,” he told AFP. “Six people are hospitalized, five are in serious condition,” he wrote on Twitter.
Since the beginning of the year, 9,589 migrants have made the extremely dangerous sea journey between the African coast and the Spanish islands, compared with 7,531 migrants a year ago, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Often attempts at irregular migration through the southern coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara towards the Spanish Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean end in drowning.
