Activist blames slow response for migrant deaths

MADRID: A Spanish nonprofit group said on Tuesday that 32 adult migrants and two children were feared dead after their group waited for more than 36 hours to be rescued from a semi-sunken boat in waters off Morocco.

Walking Borders founder Helena Maleno said the migrants continuously pleaded for help from Spanish and Moroccan authorities for at least 12 hours on Sunday, before their mobile phones lost power.

Ms Maleno said 26 survivors, all from sub-Saharan African countries, were brought ashore on Monday afternoon in the northern Moroccan town of Nador, days after the Morocco-based Spanish activist says she alerted Spain’s maritime rescue service about the sinking dinghy and its approximate location.

A rescue service spokeswoman said the distressed boat was within Morocco’s jurisdictional waters and the Spanish agency repeatedly offered to help with a searchand-rescue operation, but received no response from Morocco.

“The dinghy was in an area very close to Morocco, not far from the beach,” said spokeswoman, who was not authorised to be named in media reports.

Moroccan authorities weren’t immediately available for comment.

Hassane Ammari, the president of Alarme Phone Sahara, an association that works with migrants in Morocco, said there were no reports of bodies washing up on shores in the Nador area.

A doctor at a local hospital said that the morgue had received an undisclosed number of bodies in the past few days. The doctor requested anonymity for security reasons.

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said it couldn’t independently confirm Ms Maleno’s account. IOM spokesman Joel Millman said Walking Borders was a “reliable” source of information in the part of the world it serves.

Ms Maleno said she came up with the possible death count of 34 from survivor accounts, including from the mother of one of the two children feared dead.

The activist blamed Spain and Morocco for responding slowly and with poor coordination, a recurrent problem that Walking Borders has highlighted amid a spike in the number of Europe-bound migrants departing from northern Africa.

“There was a lack of coordination to rescue them, and they were left to die slowly,” Maleno said.

She described the survivors as being in deep shock.

“They have spent many hours watching people die and many hours in the water,” she added. “This is not the same as a fastpaced wreck; it has been a real torture for them.”

According to the IOM, more than 36,600 migrants arrived in Spain by sea during the first nine months of the year, a jump in the number from previous years that has put a strain on public services.

During the same period, more than 360 migrants were reported to have died in the waters separating Spain from the African coast, doubling the figure from the first three quarters of 2017. More than 1,700 have died on the various Mediterranean Sea routes altogether.

Many of the migrants who attempt to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, where Africa is closest to the European mainland, carry the mobile phone number of Walking Borders so they can alert the aid group if they encounter trouble.

On Tuesday, Spanish rescuers found 423 migrants attempting the crossing in 10 boats, the service said, including a dinghy with 21 people that was located 50 nautical miles north of the Canary Islands.