 At least 300 passengers of three migrant boats travelling from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands are feared missing. Two boats, one carrying at least 65 people and another with up to 60, left Kafountine, a village more than 1,000 miles away from Tenerife, last month. Both have been missing for 15 days, Spanish migrant aid group Caminando Fronteras, also called Walking Borders, said on Sunday. A third vessel, a fishing boat carrying 200 people, left Kafountine on June 27 and hasn't been seen since, the group's Helena Malenco told Reuters. 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, it told Spanish news agency Efe per the BBC. 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 Fro){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
At least 300 passengers of three migrant boats travelling from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands are feared missing.
Two boats, one carrying at least 65 people and another with up to 60, left Kafountine, a village more than 1,000 miles away from Tenerife, last month.
Both have been missing for 15 days, Spanish migrant aid group Caminando Fronteras, also called Walking Borders, said on Sunday.
A third vessel, a fishing boat carrying 200 people, left Kafountine on June 27 and hasn’t been seen since, the group’s Helena Malenco told Reuters.