MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish reconnaissance plane has found what may be a fishing boat from Senegal with around 200 migrants on board who have been missing for nearly two weeks, the maritime rescue service said on Monday.
“The plane found a large boat with some 200 people on board, 71 miles south of Gran Canaria,” a spokesman for the service told Reuters, adding that it was “possible” that it was act of the missing vessel.
A rescue vessel was en route and would take about two and a half hours to reach the location, the spokesperson added.
Migrant aid group Walking Borders said on Sunday that the fishing boat and two other boats – one carrying around 65 people and the other with between 50 and 60 on board – had been missing for about two weeks since they had left Senegal to try to reach Spain.
The Spanish rescue service said that although there was only one official alert in place for the boat with 200 passengers, its plane was on the lookout for any vessel in distress.
Helena Maleno of Walking Borders said on Monday that the families of the at least 300 migrants aboard the three boats had received no new information about their whereabouts.
The condition of the migrants was unknown.
Maleno’s organization had contacted authorities in Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco and Spain, urging them to search for the missing boats.
“We need more resources devoted to research… A plane that flies for four hours is not enough” for such an operation, she added.
The three boats set off in late June from the village of Kafountine in Senegal’s Cassamance region, home to a decades-long insurgency and located some 1,700 km (1,057 miles) from Spain’s Canary Islands. Weather conditions in the Atlantic were poor for such a trip, Maleno said.
The Atlantic migration route, typically taken by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, is one of the deadliest in the world. At least 559 people died in 2022 trying to reach the Canary Islands, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.
Data from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex shows that 1,135 migrants from Senegal have arrived in the Canary Islands so far this year.
