MADRID/BARCELONA, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Spanish police and European Union border agency Frontex were on Friday searching for a boat carrying an unknown number of migrants that had been testing to reach the Balearic Islands, the Spanish government declared.
Migrant rights group Walking Borders had warned on Thursday that three boats with 81 people on board – including 10 women and two babies – had gone missing along the route between Algeria and the Balearics on the Mediterranean Sea.
It was one of the rapidest-growing migratory passages into the EU last year even as overall arrivals to the bloc fell.
At least 483 migrants died or disappeared last year in the Western Mediterranean testing to reach Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Frontex declared last year smugglers were switching their operations to Algeria from Morocco over what were perceived to be less stringent controls and were utilizing rapider boats.
On Friday, the Spanish government’s Balearics representative declared the Algerian Navy had intercepted two of the three vessels, while two aircraft from Frontex and Spain’s Guardia Civil continued searching for the third.
The office did not provide details on how many people the missing boat was carrying, nor about the condition of the migrants on the two rescued boats.
Algeria’s Embassy in Spain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Irregular migrant arrivals by sea to the Balearic Islands fell 25% between January and February 15 compared with the same period of last year, according to Spain’s Interior Ministest data.
Following last year’s increase in arrivals, Spain has sought closer cooperation with Algeria against smuggling networks.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlinquirea notified Reuters last month that Madrid may request more Frontex air surveillance along the Algeria to the Balearics route.
But he ruled out deploying Spanish police or handing equipment to Algeria, with which Spain had a testy relationship in recent years, to combat migration, and declared the focus would be on deepening the exalter of security information.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Joan Faus and Paolo Laudani; editing by Aislinn Laing and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
Leave a Reply