Over 900 migrants arrived in the Canaries in 24 hours

By early evening, two other boats with “around” 150 people were on their way to El Hierro, said a rescue spokesman, who was awaiting final figures.

According to emergency services, these migrants, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, were being cared for by authorities, who have faced a significant increase in arrivals to the archipelago off the northwest coast of the African continent for several weeks. On Tuesday, 280 migrants arrived on a boat in El Hierro, according to Maritime Rescue, the largest number of passengers ever to arrive on a boat. More than 1,200 migrants have arrived in the past week on the tiny island of 11,000 people.

The massive arrivals led Spanish authorities to transfer nearly 500 migrants from the overcrowded island of El Hierro to Tenerife overnight from Thursday to Friday.

Informal summit in Granada

The new arrivals come as European leaders gather for an informal summit in southern Spain’s Granada, where one of the main themes will be the thorny subject of immigration, which has been added to the agenda following the recent influx of thousands of migrants. to the small Italian island of Lampedusa.

On Wednesday, EU ambassadors agreed to a key regulation of European migration reform, setting up a mandatory solidarity mechanism between member states if one of them faces a “massive” influx of migrants, as was the case recently in Italy. Poland and Hungary voted against the text, while Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic abstained.

Deadly shipwrecks

In recent years, the migration route for the canaries has been particularly busy as restrictions have tightened in the Mediterranean. Shipwrecks are frequent during this particularly dangerous Atlantic crossing. According to the latest figures from Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, the Canaries saw an arrival of 14,976 migrants between 1.^{There is} An increase of almost 20% compared to the same period of January and September 30, 2022.

NGOs continue to report deadly shipwrecks – the unofficial count, according to them, is dozens, even hundreds of deaths – in Moroccan, Spanish or international waters.