This Sunday, the Moroccan Royal Navy intercepted two boats with 118 migrants on board, nine of them women and three minors, which were sailing through Atlantic waters heading to the Canary Islands archipelago.
In a statement, the Moroccan General Staff reported that the migrants are of sub-Saharan and Asian origin and that their boats were about 20 kilometers southwest of the Moroccan city of Tarfaya, in the south of the country.
The General Staff added that these people received the necessary care on board the Moroccan ship before being entrusted to the Royal Gendarmerie for immigration procedures.
Morocco thwarted a total of 75,184 irregular emigration attempts in 2023, 6% more than in 2022, and rescued 16,818 migrants at sea, 35% more than the previous year, according to the latest statistics from the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior.
In recent years, the emigration route from different countries in West Africa to the Canary Islands has become the deadliest in the world with 6,007 deaths in 2023, an average of 18 each day, a figure that almost triples that recorded in 2022. , when 2,390 migrants lost their lives, according to the count made by the Caminando Fronteras collective.
Arrivals by sea to the Canary Islands reached a record number in 2023, the year in which 39,910 immigrants arrived on these islands, which exceeded the figure recorded in 2006, when the archipelago experienced the so-called "cayuco crisis" and they arrived in boat 31,678 foreigners.
