The Moroccan navy intercepted on Tuesday more than fifty migrants from sub-Saharan Africa off the southern coast of Morocco, as attempts to cross deadly illegal crossings to Spain are increasing, we learned from a Moroccan military source.
“A unit of the Royal Navy, on patrol off Tan-Tan, provided assistance on Tuesday to 56 candidates for irregular migration, originating from sub-Saharan Africa, aboard a makeshift boat,” the source said. military quoted by the MAP news agency.
The migrants “received first aid on board, before being transported safe and sound to the port of Tan-Tan, then handed over to the gendarmerie for the usual administrative procedures”, she added.
On Monday, the Moroccan coast guards announced that they had recovered five bodies of Senegalese migrants, and rescued 189 others whose boat had capsized on Saturday off Guerguerat, a locality in Western Sahara, in the extreme south of Morocco.
At least 13 Senegalese migrants perished in mid-July when their canoe sank off the Moroccan coast, according to local Senegalese authorities.
For its part, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) reported on July 25 the death of five Moroccan migrants in a shipwreck off the coast of Western Sahara.
A few days earlier, six Moroccan candidates for emigration drowned during an attempt to cross to Spain off the coast of the province of Nador (northern Morocco), according to local authorities and the AMDH.
Located at the northwestern tip of Africa, Morocco is a transit country for many migrants seeking to reach Europe from its Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts.
NGOs regularly report deadly shipwrecks – whose unofficial tolls, according to them, amount to tens, if not hundreds of deaths – in Moroccan, Spanish or international waters.
Moroccan authorities claim to have foiled 26,000 irregular emigration attempts in the first five months of 2023.
Another migratory route from North Africa, that of the central Mediterranean – between the coasts of Libya and Tunisia and Italy – is the most dangerous in the world with more than 20,000 deaths since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).