Bodies of African migrants recovered off Moroccan coast

TMP – 28/02/2018

The remains of more than 20 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, were recovered near the Moroccan coast on 3 February. A Spanish ferry spotted the bodies and alerted the Moroccan and Spanish rescue authorities.

A spokeswoman for the Spanish enclave of Melilla, which borders Morocco, said that around 20 bodies were recovered in Moroccan waters, while a Spanish police patrol boat also found one more body that was taken to Melilla.
A medical official told AFP that the recovered bodies, among them three women, were later taken to a mortuary in the Moroccan city of Nador.

“The 21 people who died were traveling on a small boat bound for Melilla,” Helena Maleno, an activist from the NGO Walking Borders, tweeted, adding that the total number of passengers had been higher but there were “no confirmed survivors” yet.
The day after the incident, Spanish and Moroccan rescue teams resumed aerial and maritime search operations in the search for more missing people.

Until recently, migrants were using the land route to enter Melilla and Ceuta, Spain’s African enclaves. Since Spanish authorities tightened border controls at these enclaves, many migrants have been attempting to reach them by crossing the Mediterranean.
“Before, more migrants would try to climb the Melilla fence…but now, after stricter controls, they can only cross from the sea,” Omar Naji of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights told AFP.

“Migrants must pay people smugglers 3,000 euros each to undertake the sea crossing, and this traffic is carried out before the eyes of the authorities,” he added.

The dangerous conditions facing migrants in Libya are pushing more migrants to attempt to reach Europe by crossing the sea between North Africa and southern mainland Spain.

According to the UN Migration Agency, more than 243 people have died or are missing in the Mediterranean after trying to cross it in the first month of 2018.