MADRID: Two migrants were found dead while rescuing a boat carrying 209 people on board on Monday off the coast of the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, the Spanish sea rescue team announced.

“Two dead people” were found during an emergency boat rescue 15 kilometers south of Tenerife, off the northwest coast of Africa, with a total of 209 people on board, including 154 men, 21 women and 34 minors, a maritime rescue spokesman said. AFP.

According to the rescue team, other people on the ship were not in very good condition.

Authorities did not have additional information regarding the identities of the two people who died, nor their cause of death.

In photos taken by the rescue team and taken during the rescue at sea, we can see a long dinghy full of migrants, some of whom raised their arms to the sky.

The migrants were taken to the port of Los Cristianos, on Tenerife, where they arrived at around 10:20 (09:20 GMT).

Spain’s Canaries Islands are facing their worst migration crisis this year since 2006, due to one of the most dangerous maritime migration routes in the world, with a spectacular increase in the arrival of illegal immigrants in recent months, the vast majority of them from the Sub-Sahara. Africa.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska is scheduled to meet Senegalese Interior Minister Sidiki Kaba in Dakar on Monday to discuss the issue.

In total, 23,537 migrants arrived in the Canaries between January 1 and October 15, or 79% more than in the same period in 2022, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Interior.

NGOs regularly report deadly shipwrecks – where they say the unofficial toll is tens, if not hundreds of deaths – in Moroccan, Spanish or international waters.