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PROFIT AND DANGEROUS: The borders closed by the Crown, the tighter border controls between North Africa and Europe are causing more and more migrants to choose the route across the Atlantic to the Canary Islands. The boats used are small and not made for long expeditions. Human smugglers make a lot of money, although many passengers die on the way. Photo: ELVIRA URQUIJO A. / EFE
A 17-year-old boy tells the story of how he survived the trip from Africa to the Canary Islands. 16 of his 26 traveling companions died of hunger and thirst on the way.
“We ran out of food and water, and people died every day,” the 17-year-old told the Spanish newspaper La Provincia.
The boy is among the 19,500 migrants who have arrived in the Canary Islands from Africa this year. In November alone, 8,000 migrants arrived. Never before have so many people arrived on the Spanish Atlantic islands in a month.
Both the Norwegian Red Cross and the UN IOM are now warning of the human crisis unfolding on beaches and ports in what for most Norwegians is a holiday paradise.
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Record of migrants to the Canary Islands in one month
– We are extremely concerned, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has previously written in a Press release.
The seventeen-year-old young man disembarked near the town of Arguineguín at the same time as 375 migrants, who had arrived in 18 wooden boats and rubber boats.
The boy told Spanish doctors that he came from Morocco. In October, he and six cousins decided to travel to Europe in hopes of a better life. They found a boat to take them to the Canary Islands. A total of 26 people were on the boat.
Each person must have paid 1500 euros for the trip, a total of about 400,000 crowns, according to TeldeActualidad.
Like many migrants, they traveled from the coast of Western Sahara, a territory in southern Morocco occupied by the North African state.
SAVED BY CARGO SHIPS: After fifteen days, the last 10 people were rescued by the Polish ship “Wadowice II”. One of them died on board. Photo: Elvira Urquijo A. / EFE
The trip to the Canary Islands should only take two to three days, but the boy told doctor Abián Montesdeoca that they lost their way after the GPS was destroyed. For fifteen days they wandered the sea.
When the water was drank, some of the passengers began to drink seawater, which only further dehydrated them. Then people started to die. Among them: all the relatives of the seventeen-year-old.
– Imagine having to dump the bodies overboard. He himself thought he was going to die, since they all died, one by one, Montesdeoca tells the newspaper La Provincia.
On October 19, the ship was discovered by the Polish freighter “Wadowice II”, which brought them ashore. On the way to land, another of the passengers on board the ship died, reports TeldeActualidad.
According to the UN agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 563 people have lost their lives while trying to reach the islands, writes The Guardian. This year’s death toll is more than double that of 2019, reports the IOM. Then 210 migrants died.
