The Guardamar Urania rescued 45 survivors and three deceased from the boat that sank northeast of Lanzarote in Moroccan responsibility zones on Wednesday night, according to the Emergency Consortium.
Among the people collected are 39 men, 5 women and a child, all of sub-Saharan origin. As will be recalled, another survivor and a corpse were located hours before and taken to Arrecife.
As reported to EFE, the remains of the boat - which would have departed this Tuesday from Tan Tan with 55 people on board - were about 74 nautical miles (about 137 kilometers) northeast of Arrecife, and in waters under Moroccan jurisdiction.
At around 5:00 a.m. (Canary Islands time), the Guardamar Urania of Salvamento Marítimo arrived at the port of Arrecife (Lanzarote) with 45 survivors of the shipwreck, including a child and five women, as well as three corpses, about which there are no further details
Another survivor and a fourth corpse had already been evacuated to Lanzarote on Wednesday by a Helimer helicopter sent by Salvamento from Gran Canaria, the first rescue vehicle to arrive in the area, located about 137 kilometers from Lanzarote.
Information handled by Saltamento Marítimo indicates that the shipwreck occurred about 100 kilometers northwest of Tan Tan (Morocco), at noon or early afternoon on Wednesday-
The inflatable boat had left that Moroccan town the day before. Already on Wednesday morning, its occupants began to ask for help through a satellite phone, calling both the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras and 112 of the Canary Islands.
Initially, it was because they had been left adrift, but the following calls to 112 were already desperate: they warned that they had sunk and that there were several people in the water. Even, in one of the calls, the caller said that he was clinging to a container to stay afloat, Salvamento detailed to EFE.
Since the first warnings, Rabat assumed the coordination of the rescue of that inflatable boat and had reported that it would send resources, but upon learning that there were people in the water, Salvamento asked for permission for the Helimer 202 helicopter to enter its area to provide assistance, if it arrived in time.
It was this aircraft that located the shipwreck, although initially it only found a survivor and a body, which it picked up and transferred to the Arrecife airport.
Salvamento Marítimo then offered Morocco more resources and the two rescue helicopters available in the Canary Islands (again the Helimer 202 and 203, the latter from Tenerife), the Sasemar 103 aircraft and the Guardamar Urania departed for those waters.
From the air, the plane corroborated shortly after that it saw about 20 or 25 people clinging to the remains of the semi-sunken inflatable boat, to whom it launched emergency rafts to try to help them while the rescue helicopters raised that position.
A ship en route arrived earlier, which was diverted from emergency and picked up the survivors until the Guardamar Urania appeared, after about three hours of navigation from Lanzarote.
This Salvamento Marítimo vessel took charge of the 45 survivors and the three recovered corpses and continued to rescue other boats in distress in the same area. EFE