Four migrants died, among a group of more than 700 people rescued on the night of Friday November 3 to Saturday November 4 aboard four boats off the Spanish island of El Hierro, in the Canary archipelago, according to Spanish relief.
Two of the four boats were spotted Friday evening and then accompanied to the port of La Restinga, in the south of this small island of 11,000 inhabitants, the westernmost of the archipelago, according to sea rescuers. In total , 254 migrants were on board, all in good health, the emergency services said on X (formerly Twitter). Among them were several minors.
A third boat was picked up at dawn on Saturday with 238 migrants on board. Thirteen of them were hospitalized, two of whom died despite the care provided to them, according to emergency services. A fourth and final boat was rescued at the same time with 247 migrants on board. Two of them had died when emergency services took care of them and a third was hospitalized.
These arrivals come as a weather alert was issued by the Canary Islands authorities due to strong wind and waves that could reach “5.5 meters in height” in places, according to emergency services.
Heavily used in recent years due to the tightening of controls in the Mediterranean, the route to the Canaries, dangerous and often deadly, has recorded a record influx of migrants in recent weeks. According to the latest figures from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the archipelago saw the arrival of 30,705 migrants between January 1 and October 31, more than double the figure recorded in the same period of 2022.
Of these, nearly a quarter arrived at El Hierro, which has recently become the main gateway to Spain by sea, with migrants seeking to get as far away from the African coast as possible to avoid the coast guard. This number of arrivals, which far exceeds the reception capacity of this small island of 268 km2, has forced the authorities to transfer several hundred migrants to other islands in the archipelago.