BARCELONA: Authorities in Spain’s Canary Islands say survivors rescued from a sinking rubber boat reported that 16 people were still missing. Forty-one migrants were rescued alive and one body was recovered from the shipwreck south of the island of Fuerteventura on Wednesday.

According to survivors’ testimonies, a total of 58 people had boarded the rubber boat and departed from Cape Bojador, in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service said on Friday.

The vast majority of those rescued were from the Maghreb region. Spain’s government delegation in the Canary Islands confirmed 16 people from the boat had been reported missing.

Search operations had been halted due to the continuous arrival of other migrant boats in need of rescue, the Maritime Rescue Service said.

Thousands of migrants and refugees attempt the deadly Atlantic voyage each year from Northwest and West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands. The archipelago is seen as a stepping stone for those seeking better or safer lives in continental Europe.

Last year more than 22,000 migrants reached the Canaries by boat, accounting for roughly half of all irregular arrivals to Spain, according to figures released by Spain’s Interior Ministry.

As arrivals surge, so do fatalities. According to the International Organisation for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, 1,176 people were reported to have died or gone missing on the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands last year.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2022