Gran Canaria, Spain
Reuters
Spain’s coast guard rescued 45 migrants off the coast of Gran Canaria on Sunday including 24 women and eight children.
The migrants, from sub-Saharan Africa, were spotted in a boat by a passing ship around 61 kilometres south of Gran Canaria, local media reported.
Migrants wait to disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel, in the port of Arguineguin, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, on 20th June, 2021. PICTURE: Reuters/Borja Suarez.
They were brought ashore in a rescue vessel on Sunday afternoon. Small children, some wrapped in blankets were handed to rescue workers, while some adults, looking visibly exhausted, had to be helped off the boat, Reuters footage showed.
So far this year more than 5,700 migrants have made the dangerous crossing from Africa to the Canaries archipelago, over twice as many as in the same period in 2020, which itself saw an eightfold increase from 2019.
With arrival facilities on the Canaries packed to capacity, authorities have housed of migrants thousands in camps where conditions have criticised by rights groups.
Meanwhile, around 400 migrants disembarked on Friday from the ship Geo Barents at the Italian port of Augusta, in Sicily, more than a week after the first rescue operation was carried out in the Mediterranean Sea.
Of the people on board, mainly from Africa, some 100 were minors, the MSF charity operating the boat said. Around 40 migrants were affected by fuel burns, dehydration, hypothermia and infected scabies.
The Geo Barents took the first migrants on board on June 10 off the Libyan coast. Most of them will now face 14 days of coronavirus quarantine on another boat.
For years Italy was the primary route into Europe for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and other irregular migrants but the numbers making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean have fallen in recent years.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s unity government has pursued similar restrictive migration policies to the previous administration, impounding several charity rescue boats and supporting Libyan efforts to stop illegal migrant departures.
However, there has been a pick-up in arrivals in 2021, with 18,170 people reaching Italy so far against 5,696 in the same period last year, interior ministry data show.
More than 1,000 landings in the last few days have overwhelmed the reception centre on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, one of the main landing points for people trying to get into Europe.
Authorities are now moving migrants away from the island to ease pressure on the centre.
– With ANTONIO PARRINELLO and ANGELO AMANTE
