Spanish police and European Union (EU) border agency Frontex were this Friday searching for a boat carrying an unknown number of migrants that had been trying to reach the Balearic Islands, the Spanish government said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Migrant rights group Walking Borders had warned on Thursday that three boats with 81 people on board – including 10 women and two babies, had gone missing along the route between Algeria and the Balearics on the Mediterranean Sea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was one of the fastest-growing migratory passages into the EU last year even as overall arrivals to the bloc fell.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At least 483 migrants died or disappeared last year in the Western Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, according to the International Organisation for Migration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Frontex said last year smugglers were switching their operations to Algeria from Morocco over what were perceived to be less stringent controls and were using faster boats.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On Friday, the Spanish government’s Balearics representative said the Algerian Navy had intercepted two of the three vessels, while two aircraft from Frontex and Spain’s Guardia Civil continued searching for the third.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The office did not provide details on how many people the missing boat was carrying, nor about the condition of the migrants on the two rescued boats.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Algeria’s Embassy in Spain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Irregular migrant arrivals by sea to the Balearic Islands fell 25% between January and February 15 compared with the same period of last year, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry data.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Following last year’s increase in arrivals, Spain has sought closer cooperation with Algeria against smuggling networks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told Reuters<\/em> last month that Madrid may request more Frontex air surveillance along the Algeria to the Balearics route.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But he ruled out deploying Spanish police or handing equipment to Algeria, with which Spain had a testy relationship in recent years, to combat migration, and said the focus would be on deepening the exchange of security information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22145,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-27352","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/27352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/27352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=27352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}