Almost 1,500 African migrants arrived in the Canaries over the weekend

Nearly 1,500 African migrants have washed ashore in the Canary Islands since Saturday, including a boat carrying 321 people, the rescue services of the Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco announced on Sunday.

In total, 1,427 migrants reached the islands in different dangerous boats between Friday and Saturday night and Sunday morning, emergency services reported on social network X (formerly Twitter). A spokesman for the emergency services told AFP the migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa. On Saturday, a wooden boat reached the island of El Hierro with 321 people on board, an emergency services spokesman told AFP.

The number of passengers on the single boat that arrived in the Canaries on October 3rd was 280. Public television channel TVE showed images of the colorful boat arriving at the port on Saturday, surrounded by smiling and waving migrants.

Registration numbers

The influx of migrants has been increasing in recent weeks. According to the latest statistics from the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, the archipelago received 23,537 immigrations between January 1 and October 15, almost 80% more than the same period last year.

In the first two weeks of October, 8,561 migrants arrived, according to Spanish media, a record number since the previous migration crisis in 2006. It is “Revivalof arrivals » attached to thisInstability in the Sahel», Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlasca was assessed during his visit to the Canaries this week.

The migration route through the Canaries has become increasingly busy in recent years as restrictions in the Mediterranean are tightened. But shipwrecks often occur during these long and dangerous crossings in small boats a hundred kilometers from Morocco or the Western Sahara, and even further south, from Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia, about a thousand kilometers away.