This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
ONE woman is the sole survivor of a dinghy that sank after leaving Africa a week ago with 53 refugees on board, Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service said today.
A merchant ship spotted the inflatable dinghy on Thursday in the Atlantic, some 158 miles south of the Canary Islands, and alerted Spanish emergency services.
She was found clinging to the sinking craft with a dead man and woman beside her.
She told rescuers that the boat had embarked from the Western Sahara coast and that the passengers were from the Ivory Coast.
Migrants and refugees frequently risk their lives trying to reach European soil by land and sea, and deaths are not uncommon in the area that separates the west coast of Africa and Spain’s Canary Islands.
Shipwrecks on the route are hard to verify and most victims’ bodies are never recovered.
The United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration reported that at least 250 people died on the route to Europe in the first six months of 2021.
The Walking Borders NGO counted almost 2,000 deaths in the same period.
