CANARY ISLANDS –  Nine people are confirmed drowned and at least 48 are missing after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Spain’s Canary Islands overnight, rescue services said on Saturday, the latest in a series of such disasters off the west coast of Africa.

Sea rescue teams said in a statement they had answered a distress call off El Hierro, one of the islands in the Atlantic archipelago, shortly after midnight. They managed to save 27 of the 84 people on board. Anselmo Pestana, head of the Canary Islands prefecture, said survivors had told their rescuers that the boat had set off from Nuadibu in Mauritania, nearly 500 miles (about 800km) away.

They also suggested that there might have been as many as 90 people on board. Four of those rescued were minors, he added. Pestana was speaking from the port of La Estaca on El Hierro island. The most critical part of the operation was when the rescue vessels approached the boat in distress, he told journalists, because it was vital that those on board the stricken craft stay calm.

They had to follow the instructions of the rescue crews to ensure their vessel stayed balanced and did not capsize, he added.  He said the migrants had gone two days without food or water, which may have contributed to the panic and the boat capsizing, he said. Five ships, three helicopters and one plane had taken part in the search and rescue operation, he added. This disaster follows the death of 39 migrants in early September when their boat sank off Senegal while attempting a similar crossing to the Canaries, from where migrants hope to reach mainland Europe.

Thousands of migrants have died in recent years setting off into the Atlantic to reach Europe onboard overcrowded and often dilapidated boats. The latest tragedy “again underlines the dangerousness of the Atlantic route”, Canaries regional president Fernando Clavijo wrote on X. “We need Spain and the EU to act decisively in the face of a structural humanitarian tragedy” as lives are lost “metres from Europe’s southern border”, he added. (The Guardian)