Two bodies discovered in waters off the island of Lanzarote have been identified as a young man and a woman from Morocco. Their bodies are to be repatriated next week.
A recent attempt to reach the Canary Islands ended in tragedy for two young Moroccan migrants whose bodies were found this month by Spanish authorities. The two have now been identified as a man and a woman aged 25, the local news site La Voz has reported. Their bodies are to be returned to their families in Morocco, authorities said.
Fishing boat discovered lifeless bodies
The young woman’s body was recovered on November 3 from an inflatable dinghy, together with an unreported number of other migrants. The survivors were picked up by a commercial vessel and taken back to Morocco, while the woman’s body was taken to Lanzarote by Spanish search and rescue authorities.
Later that day another migrant boat, surrounded by five dead bodies, was spotted from the air by Spanish rescuers. They were unable to act because they were busy responding to another incident, according to La Voz. Two days later, a fishing boat found the bodies of two Moroccans floating in waters off Lanzarote. One had a life jacket and the other had a tire inner tube strapped to his chest. Only one of the bodies has been identified.
The Spanish charity Caminando Fronteras and the Red Cross said the brother of one of the young victims had traveled to Lanzarote to identify the remains. Helena Maleno, spokesperson for Caminando Fronteras, told La Voz that the process had been very respectful of the deceased’s family.
Authorities have cleared the way for the woman and one of the two males to be returned to their loved ones in Morocco on Tuesday. The third body will not be buried, as officials wait for relatives to come forward.
More than 50 dead in 5 days
The Atlantic route to the Canaries has claimed the lives of dozens of people in recent days. On November 5, a dead body was found in a boat off the small island of El Hierro. Two days earlier, five migrants died when their dinghy sank east of Lanzarote.
On November 2, 10 people who had managed to reach the islands told rescuers that 48 of their fellow passengers had died on the way. On the same day, a migrant on another boat, who was brought to El Hierro with 180 others, died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
The total number of deaths recorded in just five days stands at 58. The Spanish news agency EFE reports that in the same time period, more than 3,000 people reached the islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, El Hierro and Tenerife.
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