7 young girls die at sea in the latest tragedy of the ‘Canarian route’

The patera located on Thursday 500 kilometres southwest of El Hierro was carrying eight girls and only one survived 12 days of crossing the Atlantic. The boat departed on August 15th from Dakhla, in Western Sahara, with 55 people on board, according to the testimonies collected by the NGO Caminando Fronteras, of which 28 were women and eight were girls under 18 years old.

In total, only 26 people survived the ordeal as it has been confirmed that 29 died, of which 24 of their bodies were no longer on the boat when Marítime Rescue rescued its occupants on the high seas. There would have been 27 survivors, but a woman from the Ivory Coast at a late stage of pregnancy died at the entrance to the Arguineguín pier after a cardiorespiratory arrest.

In the Maritime Rescue boat that took them to Gran Canaria, there were also four bodies: two women from the Ivory Coast, one aged between 30 and 40 years old, and the other about 25; a 30-year-old man from Mali and a girl from the Ivory Coast.

According to officials from the Red Cross, most of the survivors had dehydration, cuts and grazes, and burns from the sun. "They arrived in very bad condition," summarized the vice president of the Red Cross in the Canary Islands, Gerardo Santana, as soon as they disembarked at the Arguineguín dock on Saturday evening. A Red Cross spokeswoman explained that one of the deceased had perished after drinking seawater and due to lack of food. His wife, who was on board with him, survived.

Helena Maleno, the spokesperson for Caminando Fronteras, told the Efe news agency that they “have not stopped receiving desperate calls from France, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Morocco, asking if relatives and friends who were in this boat are alive or dead”.

Among them, a man from Morocco who was asking about his wife and eight-month-old baby whom he could not accompany on this journey because he did not have enough money, and the father of the only surviving girl, who was travelling with her mother, of whom he does not know if she died or survived, to, move urgently to the Canary Islands and take care of the little girl. Some people have been identified from photos when they arrived in Arguineguín.

MORE BOATS MISSING
Caminando Fronteras has evidence of two inflatable boats that have disappeared in recent days, one that left Tan-Tan with 42 people on board, and another from El Aaiún with 58.

Two other boats left at the beginning of August from this last enclave, one with 62 people, and another that arrived in Mauritania with seven survivors. The organization numbers 1,922 victims in 57 shipwrecks on the Canary Island immigration route during the first half of the year, in which time it also has evidence of 42 missing vessels all on migratory routes by sea to Spain, of which 36 were on their way to the Canary Islands.