EU Migrant Crisis: 11 missing near Spain’s Canaries

Survivors from a migrant boat who were rescued off the Canary Islands yesterday said 11 people who had embarked with them went missing in the attempted crossing, Spain's coastguard said.

A Spanish coastguard vessel plucked 28 North African migrants, including two women and two children, from a boat east of the island of Lanzarote in the early hours of yesterday, a coastguard spokeswoman said.

The rescued migrants said there were 39 people on board the boat when it set off for the Spanish archipelago, prompting a search operation, she added.

Among those who were rescued, a child and three men were taken to hospital for hypothermia, local emergency services said on Twitter.

Last week rescuers recovered a lone woman clinging to an overturned dinghy near the Canary Islands which lie off the northwest coast of Africa.

The woman told her rescuers that about 50 migrants were aboard the dinghy when it departed.

Migrant arrivals in the Canaries have increased dramatically since late 2019 after checks on Mediterranean routes were tightened.

Last year, just over 23,000 migrants reached the Canary Islands, the highest level since 2006 and eight times more than 2019, interior ministry figures show.

And the flow has not stopped, with figures to August 15 showing 8,222 migrants have arrived in the Canaries since the start of the year, more than twice as many as the same period in 2020.

According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 428 migrants died or disappeared on the route to the Canary Islands between January 1 and August 20 -- 102 more than in the same period last year.