Some 1,600 migrants crossed from Africa to the Canary Islands this weekend. Some of them had to be rescued from the sea, according to the authorities. At Ferro, the most southwestern island, the body of one migrant has been removed from the water.
The archipelago is located about 100 kilometers off the coast of Africa, near the south of Morocco. This year, an estimated 11,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands, according to data from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.
Hundreds more were killed on the crossing. A previous peak was in 2006, when more than 30,000 migrants reached the Spanish archipelago.
In 2019, the European Union released money to combat illegal migration to southern Spain via the Mediterranean. Since then, more migrants have been trying to get to the Canary Islands.
Eight years in prison
This week, a migrant was also killed on the route. On the island of Tenerife, a boat was intercepted on Wednesday with about seventy people on board. Five of them had to be treated in hospital because of hypothermia.
In the same week, a captain was sent to prison for up to eight years in Gran Canaria convicted for smuggling a group of migrants from Morocco last year. A woman and a one-year-old child were killed in that crossing.
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