80 dead, 44 rescued after boat found adrift off Canary Islands: Officials
The boat is believed to have departed Gambia 26 days before being found.
Eighty people were reported dead, including a baby, and 44 others were rescued Wednesday night from a boat found off the coast of the Canary Islands that had departed from Gambia, according to Spain's Interior Ministry.
The boat, with over 100 people on board, had been drifting for likely 26 days, as it is believed to have departed Gambia on Aug. 7, the ministry confirmed.
The Spanish government's Maritime Rescue and Safety Society located a "makeshift vessel" that was drifting about 65 miles southwest of the Canary Islands' coastal town of Arguineguín at 6:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to the agency.
Spain's Maritime Rescue Coordination Center deployed a rescue vessel around 11 p.m. local time, which recovered 44 males aboard the boat, all of Sub-Saharan African origin, the Maritime Rescue and Safety Society said.
Three rescued individuals were in critical condition and were airlifted by helicopter to a Canary Islands hospital, according to government officials.
The rescue vessel arrived at Arguineguín port and disembarked the remaining migrants early Thursday morning, the agency reported.
"It's unbearable that lives continue to be lost," Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands, said in a post on X. "Canarias cannot get used to or normalize the fact that the Atlantic continues to be a route of death."
The incident occurred in the wake of the mass border crossing into the Spanish territory of Ceuta in July, in which nearly 60,000 migrants flooded into the territory from Morocco, resulting in at least 67 deaths.
"What we are experiencing in Canarias and these days also in Ceuta once again highlights a reality: Spain needs a state migration policy, and Europe must assume its responsibility," Clavijo stated. "We cannot continue managing migration from crisis to crisis. We are talking about lives and dignity."
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