The Maritime Rescue Service has disembarked 177 people at the port of La Restinga from a second cayuco detected on Sunday by the SIVE south of El Hierro, bringing the total number of migrants rescued this weekend on the Canary Route to 352: 44 were taken to Lanzarote and 308, two of whom had died, to the westernmost island of the archipelago.
A SIVE radar alert detected the vessel at 12.05, when it was 22 kilometres south of El Hierro, and the Salvamar Navia was dispatched to meet it, sources at the state-owned company have told EFE.
The Maritime Rescue crew brought these people ashore, just as they had done earlier this morning with another 131 people, two of whom had died, aboard the Salvamar Diphda.
El Hierro: 177 migrants on a cayuco are being looked after at the port
On this occasion, none of the occupants of this cayuco needed to be taken to the Nuestra Señora de los Reyes Island Hospital for medical treatment.
According to information gathered from the health and emergency services, the group consists of 177 people of sub-Saharan origin, mostly men, including 11 women and several minors.
All of them were attended to at the port in El Hierro by the Red Cross’s Immediate Emergency Response Team (ERIE), the Canary Islands Emergency Service (SUC), the Port of La Restinga security service, the Guardia Civil and the National Police.
Cayuco migrants recount their nine-day journey from Senegal
According to the migrants‘ own accounts, they undertook a nine-day journey from M’bour (Senegal) and include people from Senegal, The Gambia and Guinea-Conakry.
In the coming hours, they will be transferred to the Temporary Reception Centre for Foreign Nationals (CATE) in the village of San Andrés, in the municipality of Valverde, where they will be looked after by members of the NGO ‚Corazón naranja, Ebrima Sonko‘ and will remain in police custody until they are referred to other facilities off the island.
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