There are still two months to go and everything points to the fact that the continued arrivals of pateras on Spanish shores will end up surpassing even the record of 1,6017 people assisted by Cruz Roja in 2007.
There are still two months to go and everything points to the fact that the continued arrivals of pateras on Spanish shores will end up surpassing even the record of 1,6017 people assisted by Cruz Roja in 2007.
Since 2004, when the NGO has been providing assistance on all Spanish coasts in this type of case, there have only been more arrivals of migrants than this year's provisional arrivals in 2006 and 2007. Since that year, after the cayucos record of 2006 (37,770 people assisted by this NGO), the records of the emergency teams of the humanitarian organization on the Spanish coasts and in the border perimeters of Ceuta and Melilla have never reached the more than 15,000 people assisted that they account for in 2017, according to the data accessed by Cadena SER.
The months of August and this October (still to be concluded) have been especially noteworthy in terms of the number of assistances provided by the NGO, in fact this provisional balance of 1,992 people assisted in Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla, plus almost two hundred more in the Canary Islands, is said to double the figures for October 2016, when there were 7,872 migrants assisted, according to the NGO.
Cruz Roja, through its Emergency Response Teams (ERIE), made up of around 2.000 volunteers, provides assistance under agreements signed with the State, in the face of the arrival of pateras on Spanish shores and "offers basic aid (clothes, blankets, food, hygiene kits...) and social and health care to these people in situations of extreme vulnerability, who arrive in very precarious boats, with problems of dehydration, hypothermia and injuries caused during the journey", says the humanitarian organization.
The same trend shown by the Cruz Roja balance sheet can be seen in the provisional figures from Salvamento Marítimo. According to the state entity's data, by September around 11,000 people had been rescued in 648 pateras, which, according to these figures accessed by Cadena SER, is more than double the 4,565 rescued in the first nine months of last year.
According to the detailed data, the Maritime Rescue coordinating centers in Almería and Tarifa account for more than 90 percent of the rescues, with 5,187 migrants in 204 boats and 4,924 in 404 boats respectively, although the vast majority of those rescued in the Tarifa area were traveling on rafts made of yoke, with which these people have tried to cross the Strait from Moroccan shores.
The number of dead and missing multiplies by 4 compared to last year
From the provisional figures of the state-owned Maritime Rescue company up to September, we can also extract a dramatic figure: 21 deaths and 95 missing people, far more than the 6 deaths and 22 people in unknown danger from the same period in 2016. That is to say, 116 victims of the Spanish southern border have already been counted in 2017, compared to 28 in the first nine months of last year.
Source: Cadena Ser
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