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Three dead as migrant boat runs into trouble off Spain

Three people died and seven were listed as missing when a dinghy carrying migrants across the Mediterranean from Algeria ran into trouble off southern Spain, maritime rescue officials said Friday.

Published: 22 March 2024 17:55 CET

Three dead as migrant boat runs into trouble off Spain

Three dead as migrant boat runs into trouble off Spain. Photo: STRINGER / AFP

Rescuers found the semi-sunken dinghy with two survivors and three bodies some 26 nautical miles south of the southern city of Motril on Friday, Spain’s maritime rescue service wrote on X.

The two survivors said the boat had been carrying 12 people when it set sail from Algeria six days ago, leading the authorities to suspect seven people may have fallen into the sea, it said.

The date and location of their disappearance was unclear.

A plane from the European Union’s Frontex border agency was helping in the search for the missing, it said.

Weather conditions were rough, with winds of up to 75 kilometres (47 miles) per hour and waves as high as three metres (10 feet).

Spain is one of the main gateways for migrants seeking a better life in Europe, with 56,852 undocumented migrants reaching its shores last year, an 82.1 percent jump from 2022.

The vast majority arrived on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic. Several thousand die every year while attempting the journey.

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Survivor of deadly migrant clash files UN lawsuit against Spain

At least 15 migrants drowned on February 6, 2014 while trying to reach Tarajal beach on Ceuta’s south side from neighbouring Morocco.

According to testimony from survivors, Spanish Civil Guard police fired rubber bullets in the direction of the migrants, puncturing the buoys they were clinging to.

After Spanish courts shelved a probe into the affair, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a complaint with the UN Committee Against Torture on behalf of one of the survivors.

The unaccompanied minor from Cameroon, who was just 15 when in 2014 he tried to enter Ceuta, has said he was beaten and tear-gassed by Guardia Civil officers as he struggled to hold onto the sea wall border between Morocco and the Spanish exclave.

He was then apprehended and expelled to Morocco and now lives in Germany where the ECCHR is based.

“The UN must insist that Spain re-opens its investigation into the Tarajal events and that it brings impunity to an end,” said the Berlin-based rights group’s lawyer, Carsten Gericke.

A picture taken on February 6, 2014 shows the body of one of the eight migrants who drowned while trying to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from a beach of the Moroccan town of Fnideq. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)

Spanish authorities have only admitted to firing rubber bullets in the air as a warning.

Sixteen Civil Guard officers were charged over the incident but Spain’s Supreme Court in 2022 shelved the case due to a lack of evidence after several lower courts had opened and closed the case.

“There is still no truth, no justice, the families have not been compensated and therefore there is no guarantee of non-repetition,” said Elena Muñoz of the Spanish Commission for Aid to Refugees, a non-governmental organisation also known by its Spanish acronym CEAR.

Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish territories on the northern Moroccan coast, are the European Union’s only land borders on the African continent and are frequently the target of migrants hoping to reach mainland Europe.

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