Rescue services have located a boat adrift near the coast of southeastern Spain, with four dead women on board PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP/ARCHIVES
Rescue services said Friday they had located a boat adrift near the coast of southeastern Spain, with four dead women on board.
According to the Civil Guard, the Spanish equivalent of the French gendarmerie which is in charge of the investigation, these are probably migrants who tried to reach the Spanish coast from North Africa.
On Thursday evening, rescuers were informed of the presence of a semi-rigid boat drifting some 11 nautical miles (about 20 km) southeast of Cartagena, a city in southeastern Spain on the Mediterranean coast, in which they found “four deceased people”, explained a spokesperson.
In a message on Contacted by AFP, the Civil Guard confirmed that the bodies were those of four women but that there was no other information on their identity (age, origin, etc.).
This boat, towed to the port of Cartagena, could have found itself running out of fuel.
Spain is one of the main gateways for irregular immigration to the European continent.
In 2023, 56,852 illegal migrants, almost double the number in 2022 (+82.1%), entered the country, due to unprecedented arrivals in the Canary Islands archipelago, located in the Atlantic Ocean.
According to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, at least 6,618 migrants died or disappeared in 2023 while trying to reach Spain, or 18 disappearances per day on average.
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