More migrants from Africa are heading for Spain’s Canary islands, a route to the European mainland that is less closely monitored than the Mediterranean, but also vastly more dangerous.The islands sit off the west coast of Africa and the strong ocean currents present an added risk.But at least three boats that set off from Senegal have been wrecked in recent days en route to the Canaries, aid group Caminando Fronteras said, numbering the people missing in the sinkings at more than 300.Rescuers were still searching Thursday for the vessels, including one that the NGO said had set off on a 1,700-kilometre (1,050-mile) journey from the small coastal town of Kafountine.Still more boats are launched from Morocco and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, separated from the Spanish archipelago by 450 kilometres of dangerous open water.”Migrants are setting off from further and further away and taking ever-greater risks, even when the Canaries route is already seen as one of the deadliest,” said Sara Prestianni, a migration specialist at aid group EuroMed Rights.Such crossings are “an alternative” for migrants hoping to avoid the “reinforced border controls” at other routes into EU territory.- 7,200 arrivals in 2023 -A Rabat-Madrid deal last year stepped up surveillance at border crossings into Spanish north African exclaves Ceuta and Melilla, as well as in the straits of Gibraltar.At least 23 people were killed when migrants from sub-Saharan Africa attempted in June 2022 to get over the Melilla border wall.Arrivals have fallen in the Canaries in recent months, with Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in April hailing the fact that the “Atlantic route” was “the only one in Europe” reporting fewer crossings, unlike others such as the central Mediterranean.Moroccan help had been “essential” to slashing the number of migrants, Sanchez added.This month, Spain’s interior ministry said the 7,213 people who arrived on 150 boats between January and June this year represented an 18-percent fall on 2022’s figure.But Prestianni pointed out that departures for the Canaries have been rising in recent days as pressure has built over 2,000 kilometres away in Tunisia.- Clashes in Tunisia -A local man was killed on July 3 in clashes with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Sfax, a Tunisian coastal city where many irregular crossing attempts set off.Since then, authorities have swept people waiting to leave from the city, dumping many of them to inhospitable desert areas including on the Libyan border.”It is possible that migrants are choosing not to go through this hell, with the risk of racist attacks, expulsion to Libya, and all the other trials they could face in that region,” Prestianni said.Aid groups and UN experts have for years highlighted the risks of violence, torture, slavery and sexual abuse run by migrants in Libya.But on the alternative Canaries route, “every peak in departures coincides with a peak in deaths”, Prestianni added.”It’s a very dangerous, very long route, an ocean with strong currents. We’ve often seen cayucos (Senegalese fishing boats) arrive with corpses aboard,” she said.At least six people died Wednesday when a canoe heading for the Canaries capsized on its way from Senegal.More than 11,200 people died or disappeared trying to reach Spain between 2018 and 2022, Caminando Fronteras said in a report published at the end of last year — an average of six each day.
