(AP) More than 1,600 migrants have either been rescued at sea or reached Spain’s Canary Islands in small boats over the weekend, emergency services for the archipelago said Sunday.
The body of one person who had died during the perilous journey was recovered by rescuers in waters near the island of El Hierro, the Canary Islands emergency services said. Another person was airlifted by helicopter to a local hospital for an unspecified health problem.
The route to the islands from western Africa, which at its closest point in Morocco is 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) away, has seen an increase in traffic this year after the European Union funded Morocco in 2019 to stop migrants from reaching southern Spain via the Mediterranean Sea.
