Every year, thousands of migrants travel from West Africa to the Canary Islands
More than 30 migrants may have drowned after their boat capsized in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands, two charities said.
Walking Borders and Alarm Phone said the boat was carrying about 60 people.
Spanish authorities said rescue teams recovered the bodies of a minor and a man and rescued another 24 people, but did not know how many people were on board.
The incident casts new light on Europe’s response to migration after a boat sank off Greece last week.
Helena Maleno Garcón of Walking Borders said 39 people had drowned, including four women and a baby, while Alarm Phone said 35 people were missing. Both organizations monitor migrant boats and receive calls from people on board or their relatives.
The boat sank about 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Gran Canaria on Wednesday.
“It is torture for 60 people, including six women and a baby, to wait more than 12 hours for rescue in a fragile inflatable boat that could sink,” Ms Garzon said.
A Spanish rescue service vessel, the Guardamar Caliope, was only about an hour’s sail away from the boat on Tuesday evening, Reuters reported, citing Spanish state news agency EFE.
The ship did not help the boat as the operation was taken over by Moroccan officials, who sent a patrol boat that arrived on Wednesday morning, 10 hours after it was spotted by a Spanish rescue plane, Reuters reported.
The BBC has sent a request for comment to Morocco’s interior ministry.
Angel Victor Torres, leader of the Canary Islands region, described the incident as a “tragedy” and called on the European Union to establish a migration policy that “offers coordinated and supportive responses” to the migration problem.
Although they are off the west coast of Africa, the Canary Islands are part of Spain and many migrants travel from Africa to the archipelago in the hope of reaching mainland Europe.
The West Africa-Atlantic migration route is considered one of the world’s deadliest, and at least 543 migrants died or went missing on the journey in 2022, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The IOM said there were 45 shipwrecks along the route during that period, but admitted the figure was “probably an underestimate” because data was scarce and incomplete.
Most of the travelers are from Morocco, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it said.
Separately, Spanish authorities rescued more than 160 people from three other boats near the islands of Lanzarote and Gran Canaria overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning.
The news comes after a migrant boat carrying hundreds of people sank off the Greek coast last week, with at least 78 known to have died, although many more are feared to have drowned.