Dozens of Migrants Bound for Canary Islands Feared Dead as Boat Sinks

At least two migrants died and 35 more were feared dead after an inflatable boat en route to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off northwestern Africa, sank on Wednesday, according to the Spanish authorities and an aid group.

Carmen Lorente Sánchez, a spokeswoman for Maritime Rescue, Spain’s sea search-and-rescue agency, said “the lifeless body of a minor” and “the corpse of a man” had been found. She added that rescue operations coordinated by the Moroccan authorities had saved 24 people.

But the toll was expected to rise since the boat carried 61 people, according to Caminando Fronteras, a nongovernmental organization that tracks the deaths of migrants.

The inflatable vessel en route to the Canary Islands sank just days after as many as 650 migrants drowned when an overloaded fishing boat capsized off Greece a week ago. That disaster has brought renewed attention to the rising number of deaths of people trying to reach Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, and to European nations’ handling of the people and smugglers traversing the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

In the case near Greece, investigators are trying to learn what exactly happened with the boat — whether smugglers refused assistance and panic led to a capsize, as the Coast Guard claims, or whether a failed attempt to tow the ship caused it to sink, as some survivors contend.

In the case on Wednesday, rights groups and other observers were already asking questions about the Spanish and Moroccan responses.

Ms. Lorente Sánchez, of Maritime Rescue, said a plane operated by the Spanish authorities had spotted the boat on Tuesday night. But the Spanish newspaper El País reported that rescue operations by the Moroccan authorities only began at 6:20 a.m. on Wednesday, more than 10 hours later.

Some local reporters and aid workers also asked why the rescue operations had been conducted by Morocco. “The inflatable had been begging for rescue in Spanish waters for more than 12 hours,” Helena Maleno Garzón, who founded Caminando Fronteras, said in a Twitter post.

Ms. Lorente Sánchez said the boat capsized about 46 miles off the Moroccan coast and about twice as far from the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. But it remains unclear which country is responsible for rescues in the exact area where the boat was spotted.

Migration routes linking West Africa to Spain, which cross both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, have become among the most perilous in recent years. In 2022 alone, Caminando Fronteras said it had confirmed the deaths of 2,390 people heading for Europe on those routes, including 1,784 victims on the route between Africa and the Canary Islands.

On Tuesday, the Spanish authorities said that a pregnant woman had died trying to reach the Canary Islands, after her body was found on a dinghy carrying about 50 migrants.

As of mid-June, nearly 6,000 migrants have arrived on the Canary Islands in inflatable boats this year, according to Spanish government data.

International monitors have observed an increase in attempts to cross the Mediterranean, and in deaths. Last year, nearly 3,800 migrants died on routes within and from the Middle East and North Africa region, according to the International Organization for Migration — the highest death toll in five years.