More Africans arrive in Canaries

Spain said yesterday that its coast guard had intercepted four boats within 24 hours carrying 248 would-be immigrants from west Africa as they arrived on the Canary Islands, and had sighted another.

A boat with 90 people aboard arrived at Tenerife while another carrying 61 reached La Gomera yesterday, while on Friday two other boats from West Africa arrived at Gran Canaria, one with 53 people on board and the other carrying 44 survivors and one dead man, the Interior Ministry said.

A fifth boat had been spotted heading for Gran Canaria.

Some of the migrants were suffering from dehydration or hypothermia, and 12 were taken to a hospital, the spokeswoman said.

Thousands of people from Africa try to reach Europe through Spain each year, an increasing number of them setting off in boats from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

Many die during dangerous ocean crossings.

Of those who get across, most are intercepted before landfall and kept in holding centres.

Authorities then have 40 days to send them home or release them.

Immigrants who can be identified from official identity documents are sent back to their countries of origin or to the country from which they set sail if Spain has a repatriation agreement with it.

The Spanish government says more than 11,000 Africans from some of the continent’s poorest countries have made the perilous trip to the Canary Islands from western coasts so far this year, already doubling the total for 2005.

More than 1,000 are reported to have died attempting the voyage since late last year.

After a particularly big wave of arrivals in the Canary Islands in May, Spain elicited a promise from the European Union to send boats and planes to help patrol waters off the islands and deter Africans from travelling there.

Initially the aid was to be for just a few months, but EU officials now say it is open-ended. The aircraft and vessels had been due to start surveillance operations July 18, though in practice they have yet to do so, the spokeswoman said.