Migrant boat capsizes off Spanish coast leaves 9 dead and 48 missing

A boat carrying migrants capsized off Spain's Canary Islands overnight, killing at least nine and leaving 48 missing, the national maritime rescue service said on Saturday.

Eighty-four people were on board and 27 were saved after rescuers responded to a distress call received shortly after midnight from off El Hierro, one of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago, a statement said.

This follows the death of 39 migrants in early September when their boat sank off Senegal while attempting a similar crossing to the Canaries, from where migrants hope to reach mainland Europe.

Thousands of migrants have died in recent years setting off into the Atlantic to reach Europe onboard overcrowded and often dilapidated boats.

The latest tragedy "again underlines the dangerousness of the Atlantic route", Canaries regional president Fernando Clavijo wrote on X.

"We need Spain and the EU to act decisively in the face of a structural humanitarian tragedy" as lives are lost "metres from Europe's southern border", he added.

In late August, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited Mauritania and The Gambia to sign cooperation agreements to crack down on people smugglers while expanding pathways for legal immigration.

As of August 15, 22,304 migrants had reached the Canaries since the start of the year, up from 9,864 in the same period the previous year.

Almost 40,000 migrants entered the Canaries in 2023, a record on course to be broken this year as easier navigation conditions from September tend to lead to a spike in crossing attempts.

The Atlantic route is particularly deadly, with many of the crowded and poorly equipped boats unable to cope with the strong ocean currents. Some boats depart African beaches as far as 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the Canaries.

The International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, estimates that 4,857 people have died on this route since 2014.

Many aid organisations say that is a massive undercount, with Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish NGO that aids migrants, saying 18,680 have died trying to reach Europe.