On Friday, Moroccan authorities recovered the bodies of 13 Moroccan immigrants, including a woman, after their boat sank off Mir El-Left in the south, local media reported.
Authorities managed to rescue 24 more migrants, including a minor, news website Hespress reported on Friday, citing sources who asked not to be identified in the southern coastal city of Mir El-Left.
The number of deceased immigrants is expected to increase because there are still eight missing.
The boat was carrying 45 people and was heading for the Spanish islands of Las Palmas in the Canary archipelago. The migrants had paid sums ranging from 20,000 to 25,000 dirhams ($2,000 to $2,200), according to the news site.
Moroccan authorities have not confirmed the drowning incident, Agence France-Presse reported.
News website 2M said that “as soon as the boat entered Atlantic waters at Aimi Netreka beach (…) it sustained damage and lost air, so the victims found themselves in the middle to the waves”.
And the Hespress website indicated that the boat “capped over less than ten minutes after launch, due to a collision with rocks.”
Morocco, located in the northwestern tip of Africa, is a transit country for many migrants, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, who seek to reach Europe via its Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts.
At least 11,200 migrants have died or disappeared since 2018 while trying to enter Spain, an average of six people a day, according to a report by Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.
The organization indicated that the road alone between the northwest coast of Africa and the Canary Islands saw the deaths of 7,692 migrants.
Since late 2019, the number of migrants attempting to illegally cross the perilous trans-Atlantic migration route has increased as patrols in the Mediterranean have intensified.
Since the beginning of 2022, 27,789 illegal immigrants have managed to reach Spain (15,742 of them in the Canary Islands), according to data released by the Spanish Interior Ministry as of December 15.
In a related context, the Libyan Coast Guard said a vessel carrying at least 700 migrants was intercepted off Libya’s east coast.
This is one of the largest intercepts in recent months of migrants seeking a better life in Europe via the war-torn North African country, according to the Associated Press.
The coast guard said the boat was stopped on Friday off the Mediterranean city of Mora, 90km west of the eastern city of Benghazi.
He said in a statement that the migrants come from different countries and that those who have entered Libya illegally will be extradited to their countries of origin.
The release did not provide further details.
The Coast Guard posted photos on Facebook showing a large ship that was overcrowded, with most of the people on board appearing to be young people.
And in August last year, Italian military vessels helped a boat loaded with 539 migrants off the southern island of Lampedusa. The boat departed from the Libyan coast.
