Spain is investigating reports of casualties among a group of migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands from Africa, after the Walking Borders charity cited survivors of the inflatable boat as saying Moroccan soldiers had opened fire, killing at least one of them. they.
Moroccan authorities did not immediately respond to email and phone requests for comment about the allegation that their forces fired on the group of more than 40 migrants as they tried to leave on a boat early Tuesday morning, March 23. May, from a beach south of Cape Boujdour, on the north coast of Western Sahara.
Reuters could not independently verify the information.
“We are investigating,” a Spanish police source told Reuters, referring to reports of injuries.
The Walking Borders charity, which documents the disappearance of migrants at sea, posted a version of the incident on Twitter. “According to the survivors, the Moroccan military fired up to four bursts of shots while the boat was leaving, from a beach south of Cape Bojador, on the twenty-third day at seven in the morning.”
After the incident, the group managed to get away and was finally recovered 12 miles south of Gran Canaria at nine o’clock on Thursday night in a rescue involving helicopters and Spanish patrol boats, according to information from the Canary Islands authorities.
The migrants said they had set sail from the small town of Boujdour, in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, 200 nautical miles south of the Canary Islands, according to authorities.
A spokesman for the Spanish government in the Canary Islands said he had no record of gunshot wounds among the migrants who arrived – 32 men, nine women and one girl – but that three of them required medical attention, including a pregnant woman, another person “unwell” and a third with “leg trauma”, reports Reuters.
But a Spanish police source later said that one of the three migrants being treated for injuries in the Canary Islands had gunshot wounds and injuries, and that police were gathering evidence for an investigation.
Last night, police sources told Efe that three of the immigrants rescued on Thursday night by Maritime Rescue from a rubber boat in the south of Gran Canaria had gunshot wounds and two of them had to be hospitalized.
These sources have confirmed the hospitalization of the two immigrants, whose lives are not in danger, and have indicated that there is a third minor gunshot wound, which has not required hospital admission and remains in the Temporary Care Center for Foreigners (CATE ) of Barranco Seco, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Initially, the CATE asked the Canary Islands Emergency Service around 10:00 a.m. on Friday to transfer two occupants of the inflatable with pain to a health center, a source involved in the assistance told Efe.
In one case, it was a person with abdominal pain and, in the other, a woman with a “firearm” impact, who was evacuated to the Hospital Insular de Gran Canaria by ambulance shortly after 10:30 a.m. this Friday.
This woman’s firearm wound was not detected by the toilets at the Arguineguín dock. In fact, she spent the night in police custody.
Subsequently, police sources have raised the number of wounded by firearms to three, although one of them has not had to be admitted.
Helena Maleno, head of Walking Borders, said survivors of the incident who remained in Morocco had told her by phone that soldiers from an anti-immigration patrol fired up to four rounds of rifles at the boat as it left, hitting a young Malian man in the neck. and killing him.
Txema Santana, an adviser to the Canary Islands government on migration, told Reuters the migrants had told rescue personnel that two people had been shot dead by what they described as an “anti-migration control” before leaving Morocco, Reuters reports. ..
José Antonio Rodríguez Verona, head of the Red Cross emergency team in the Canary Islands, said what exactly had happened remained unclear and that the migrants who managed to reach the Canary Islands did not identify who had opened fire.
“The migrants told us that two people had died on the voyage and that their bodies had been thrown overboard,” he told Reuters.
Upon arriving at the port of Arguineguín with the Salvamar Macondo (11:30 p.m. on Thursday), several of the occupants of the inflatable reported that they had left Cape Bojador, in the Sahara, on Tuesday, and that they were shot at from land when they tried to board.
As a result, they detailed, two of the occupants of the boat suffered gunshot wounds and died during the two days of the journey. Their bodies were thrown into the sea, reports Efe.
The Salvamar Macondo arrived in Gran Canaria with the 43 rescued (25 men, ten women and nine minors) almost at midnight. At the Arguineguín wharf, these people were given the usual assistance by doctors from the Canarian public health system and the Red Cross and three people were referred to hospitals.
Injuries to migrants are often caused by smuggling gangs following disputes, according to migrant and rights groups who previously spoke to Reuters. However, Moroccan rights groups, including the State Human Rights Council (CNDH), have also warned of the increasing use of force by the Moroccan authorities in controlling migrants from Africa bound for Europe.
Last year, at least 23 people were killed and scores injured or missing in a massive attempt to cross the border between Morocco and the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla.
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