The NGOs Caminando Fronteras and Alarm Phone have reported that they have been unable to contact the 150 people on board a drifting cayuco about 735 kilometers south of the Canary Islands for two days and who began asking for help last Saturday, without being rescued.
Maritime Rescue has confirmed to Efe that it is aware of this emergency, which is taking place in the Atlantic area where Spain shares rescue responsibility (SAR) with Morocco, but specifies that Rabat has been in charge of it from the beginning, since the last known position of the cayuco placed it about 150 kilometers east of Guerguerat (Sahara) and Nuadibú (Mauritania).
It is a cayuco that left Niodior (Senegal) on the night of Monday, October 21 and managed to contact the NGOs that usually send alerts to the rescue services on its fifth day of crossing, when it was already passing Mauritania.
The founder of Caminando Fronteras, Helena Maleno, has detailed that her team last spoke with the occupants of the cayuco on Saturday the 26th, through a satellite phone they were carrying on board. Specifically at 4.42 and 5.00 in the morning of October 26.
Around the same time, Alarm Phone provided the Maritime Rescue center in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias with the position of the cayuco (21º 00.994' N, 18º 29.992' W) after contacting the cayuco by satellite phone, this NGO details in a statement.
Maleno explains that the people who spoke with Caminando indicated that they were facing a strong headwind that prevented them from moving forward and that was overheating the engine. Later, they learned from Salvamento that a merchant ship en route that approached to help them hours later and gave them water, reported that they were already without propulsion and the wind and current were pushing them south.
However, neither Caminando Fronteras nor Alarm Phone have any record that the cayuco has been rescued, only that Spain refers their questions to Morocco and that, in recent hours, Rabat points to Mauritania as responsible for the emergency.
"We are desperate. This is another example of how people can be left to die at sea," Maleno denounces.
The two organizations have repeatedly contacted the Spanish authorities to ask that Maritime Rescue assume the rescue with the means it has in the Canary Islands.
According to the last position provided of the cayuco (which dates from Saturday), it was 735 kilometers from La Restinga (El Hierro), the nearest Canary port.
Salvamento has already carried out rescues at that distance on previous occasions in the Canary Islands with Guardamar-type ships, but if it sent one of them from El Hierro it would take about a day to reach that point off Nuadibú (the guardamares sail at about 20 knots at rescue speed, 37 km/h) and, probably, it would need to be refueled on the return journey.
