Miracles of the ocean. As several Spanish media reported on Tuesday, including the EFE news agency, the Iberian Coast Guard intercepted three people who had been traveling illegally for eleven days at the helm of the Maltese oil tanker Alithini II from Nigeria late on Monday. which currently anchors in the port of Las Palmas, located in the Canary Islands.
Without food and at the mercy of the ocean
As he explained on Twitter Maritime Rescuethe public institution responsible for maritime safety in Spanish waters, the three people were transferred to a hospital and suffer from dehydration and moderate hypothermia.
However, the place of embarkation of the migrants is not well established. If the ship left the port of Lagos in Nigeria, Cadena Ser reveals that its last stop would have been in The Gambia, a West African country separated by just under 1,700 kilometers from the Canary Islands.
In total, it is estimated that the three men spent more than a week at the narrow helm of this boat, without food and at the mercy of the vagaries of the Atlantic Ocean. When the boats are lightly loaded, the rudder stays above the waterline and allows multiple people to sit there.
frequent attempts
Still according to Cadena Ser, this way of reaching the European continent is not so rare, although too often many stowaways die during this journey.
On social networks, Txema Santana, Migration Advisor to the Government of the Canary Islands, believes that this attempt “will not be the last” and that “it will be repeated.”
According to EFE, other migrants had been intercepted in similar circumstances in the port of Las Palmas in the past. In 2020, three of them were found at the helm of a Saint Vincent and the Grenadines oil tanker and a month later, another three on that of a Norwegian oil tanker. Both ships had left the port of Lagos.
Source: BFM TV
