Spain’s maritime rescue service on Wednesday rescued about 100 migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands by boat from Africa amid a sharp increase in the number of migrants, which has more than doubled this year compared to 2020 levels.
Kyiv. Ukraine. Ukraine Gate – September 02, 2021 – Tourism and Travel
A spokesman for the Maritime Rescue Service said the migrants were rescued from three boats.
On Tuesday, the service rescued 31 migrants on a boat near the island of Lanzarote, one of whom died soon after. Migrants told emergency services that the boat had left the African coast with about 60 people on board and that some of them had fallen into the sea while traveling, a spokesman said.
According to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, between January 1 and August 15, 2021, 8,222 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands illegally, compared to 3,364 migrants in the same period last year.
In 2020, more than 23,000 migrants arrived in the archipelago, which is eight times more than in 2019, which was one of the largest influx of migrants in the last decade.
The total number of migrants arriving in Spain increased by 29% in 2020, reaching almost 42 thousand people.
Earlier this year, Spanish authorities opened several camps for migrants in the Canary Islands. They were designed as a more stable solution after the influx of refugees in 2020 when hundreds of people remained for weeks in a crowded, hastily improvised port camp, the conditions of which were sharply criticized by human rights groups.
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Source: Ukrgate
