MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish authorities have called off the search for dozens of passengers on a migrant boat that sank near the island of El Hierro in the Canary Islands over the weekend, killing at least nine people, the maritime rescue service said on Wednesday.
The boat sank in the early hours of Saturday. While 27 people were rescued, at least 48 passengers are missing and hopes of retrieving their remains from sea have waned.
If the missing are confirmed dead, it would make this the deadliest such incident in 30 years of crossings from Africa to the Canary Islands. The deadliest recorded to date occurred in 2009 off the island of Lanzarote, when 25 people died.
A spokesperson for the rescue service said the extensive search operation had been suspended due to a lack of results.
The calm seas and light winds associated with late summer in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa have prompted a renewed surge of migrants, local authorities said last month.
Some 30,808 migrants arrived in the Canaries by sea in the first nine months of 2024, according to interior ministry data, more than twice as many as in the same period last year.
(Reporting by David Latona; Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Andrei Khalip and Kevin Liffey)
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