More than 80 feared dead after migrant boat drifts 27 days in Atlantic

More than 80 people, including a baby, are feared to have died after a migrant boat drifted in the Atlantic Ocean for 27 days, Spanish authorities and a human rights activist said.

Spanish Maritime Rescue teams located the vessel on Wednesday, September 2, about 65 nautical miles southwest of Arguineguín, a coastal town on Gran Canaria. Rescuers found 44 survivors and five bodies aboard the boat, the BBC reports.

The vessel is believed to have left The Gambia in West Africa in early August carrying 127 people. Helena Maleno Garzón, a human rights activist and founder of the Spanish charity Caminando Fronteras, said 83 people had died.

Maritime Rescue said it could not verify how many people had originally been aboard the vessel.

The 44 survivors were men from sub-Saharan Africa, according to Maritime Rescue. Three were airlifted to hospital in critical condition, while the remaining survivors were taken by sea to Gran Canaria, where they disembarked in the early hours of Thursday.

Rescuers were unable to recover the five bodies found aboard because of rough sea conditions.

“Once the rescue was complete, adverse weather conditions in the area - featuring 20-knot winds and 2.5m waves - made it impossible to recover the five bodies found on board the vessel,” Maritime Rescue said.

Fernando Clavijo, head of the Canary Islands government, expressed alarm over the deaths in a post on X.

“It is intolerable that lives continue to be lost. The Canaries cannot get used to or accept as normal the fact that the Atlantic continues to be a death trap,” he said.

The Atlantic crossing from West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. Thousands of migrants attempt the perilous journey each year in an effort to reach Spanish territory, despite the dangers posed by rough seas, powerful currents and the long distance involved.

By Tamilla Hasanova