The victims of the latest known tragedy on the Canary Islands immigration route, starring the occupants of a canoe that spent ten days adrift until it was found on Wednesday night 200 kilometers from El Hierro, may number around fifty.
When they arrived in the early hours of the morning with the Salvamar Adhara at the port of La Restinga, very weak, dehydrated and many of them still shocked by what they had experienced, the 67 survivors of that canoe (in addition to three more evacuated by helicopter to Tenerife) told the health services that they had lost several companions on the journey, whose bodies they threw into the sea as they died.
Some mentioned no less than six, others raised that figure to ten and then ended up talking about twelve, according to health workers present at the assistance on the dock told EFE.
Due to the state in which they all arrived (eleven ended up in the hospital, eight in El Hierro and three in Tenerife) and the confirmation that the number of missing people was growing as more testimonies were collected, the Civil Guard itself was already cautious about the figure of twelve victims, not ruling out that it was much higher, according to its interlocutors with the NGOs.
Sources from the emergency services in El Hierro have told Efe that many of the survivors spent their first hours on land crying, still overwhelmed by the death of their companions, both on the dock and in the Temporary Care Center for Foreigners (CATE) of San Andrés, where they will spend a maximum of 72 hours until the Police take their details and refer them to the reception network.
There, several have reported that between 110 and 120 people left for the Canary Islands in the canoe, which would result in a range of missing people of between 40 and 50 people, including women and minors, although their testimonies are still confusing. They also stated that they have the documents of some of them.
From the data taken by the Police and health services in the port of La Restinga, it is known that the occupants of the canoe claim that they left from Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, thirteen days before they were rescued, which places their possible departure date on the weekend of May 25 and 26.
They have also reported that on the third day of the journey, they ran out of engine, at the mercy of the currents and the wind.
From Nouakchott to El Hierro there are about 1,100 kilometers of navigation, which canoes that leave from that point on the coast of Mauritania usually cover in about seven days, approximately. And that is the time that its occupants usually take as a reference to calculate the provisions of food, water and fuel.
It is not yet known what happened to them, but the death of one of the eight rescued who were hospitalized in El Hierro a few hours after entering the center, a man of about 24 years old, already provides some clear indications about the reasons why the occupants of the canoe were dying.
That young man, who was buried this Thursday in the municipal cemetery of Valverde under the code 'Immigrant No. 119 R3', died of starvation and the high levels of sodium he had in his body, health sources have told EFE. In other words, he was killed by hunger and the sea water he drank to quench his thirst.
The Caminando Fronteras collective is reviewing the alerts it has received from relatives about canoes that left for the Canary Islands from Mauritania on those dates, May 25-26. For the moment, it has data from one that left those days with 95 occupants, but it has not yet confirmed that it is the same one, one of its spokespersons has pointed out.
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