At least 34 people have died as of Tuesday in a shipwreck off the coast of Morocco, according to Helena Maleno, an activist with Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras. She said the organization alerted authorities in Spain and Morocco on Sunday to avoid a "great human tragedy".
At least 34 people have died off the coast of Morocco in a new humanitarian tragedy announced Tuesday by Helena Maleno, an activist with the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, on Twitter, with the hashtag #Fronterasur. She said among the 34 who died there was a newborn and a child, who were part of a group of 60 people traveling on a boat that sank.
Announced disappearance on Sunday
Maleno had sounded the alarm on Twitter on Sunday over the disappearance of a boat that "had departed from the Moroccan coast with 60 people aboard". On Monday, writing from the Caminando Fronteras Twitter account, she wrote, "There are already seven people dead and no one wants to go save them. We are calling on Morocco and Spain to coordinate to avoid a great human tragedy".
Maleno, who is the NGO's spokesperson, said the boat was carrying Sub-Saharan Africans, including 20 women and three children. It had departed Saturday evening from a Moroccan beach and was adrift for three days, she said.
The Spanish NGO, which is based in the Moroccan city of Tangier, had received the first call for help at 5 a.m. on Sunday, September 30, from the migrants themselves on the half-sunken boat. The organization had already sent an SOS to Moroccan maritime authorities. "The last contact we had with these people was at 5 p.m. on Sunday," Maleno said, cited by online magazine Publico.
"They were desperate because no one was rescuing them and they said that at least 10 people on board had already died," she said.
Spanish authorities say Morocco did not respond
A spokesperson from the Spanish Maritime Rescue Agency told Spanish media it had "offered collaboration and coordination" to Moroccan authorities "for the search and rescue of this boat in Moroccan waters, but did not receive a response". On Monday, Moroccan navy sources reported the location of a boat headed toward Spanish waters with 17 people aboard, between the ages of 19-30, from Morocco's northern Rif region. It said on Sunday it intercepted two other boats with 112 Moroccans aboard, from the same region. (Picture shows a total of ).