PUERTO DE LA ESTACA, SEPT 29 – Rescue teams today resumed the search for at least 48 migrants who went missing a day earlier after their boat capsized while being rescued off Spain’s Canary Islands, killing at least nine people.
Hopes of finding survivors were slim as sea rescue teams searched the waters near El Hierro, an island in the Atlantic archipelago.
It is the latest in a series of such disasters to hit the African coast.
“The search operation is being resumed,” the Spanish maritime rescue organization told AFP.
The president of the Canary region, Fernando Clavijo, told reporters yesterday that the 48 migrants were presumed dead.
He predicted that more bodies would likely turn up in the next two or three days, carried by the current.
A total of 27 migrants were rescued and nine bodies were recovered after the boat, which had departed from Nouadhibou in Mauritania, some 800 kilometers away, capsized off El Hierro.
The tragedy occurred when rescue teams arrived to help the migrants after they themselves called emergency services, according to Spanish officials. – AFP
