5 Migrants Die Trying to Reach Canary Islands

Migrants rescued in the Atlantic Ocean disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, May 17, 2020. REUTERS/Borja Suarez
Migrants rescued in the Atlantic Ocean disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, May 17, 2020. REUTERS/Borja Suarez
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5 Migrants Die Trying to Reach Canary Islands

Migrants rescued in the Atlantic Ocean disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, May 17, 2020. REUTERS/Borja Suarez
Migrants rescued in the Atlantic Ocean disembark from a Spanish coast guard vessel in the port of Arguineguin on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, May 17, 2020. REUTERS/Borja Suarez

Five African migrants have died trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands by boat, officials said Friday, two days after another vessel was spotted near the archipelago with 15 dead migrants on board.

A Spanish air force patrol plane detected the boat about 110 miles (180 kilometers) southeast of the island of Gran Canaria and alerted Spain's maritime rescue service which intercepted the vessel, a spokeswoman for the service said.

Rescuers found 12 people on board, several of them in poor health, and four bodies, AFP quoted her as saying.

Two of the migrants were evacuated by helicopter to a health center in Gran Canaria, where one of them later died.

Spain's maritime rescue service discovered a boat near the island on Wednesday with 15 dead migrants on board.

At the beginning of the month at least 27 migrants who were trying to reach the Canaries died when their vessel failed off the coast of Mauritania.

Illegal migration to the islands, in the Atlantic Ocean west of Morocco, has risen over six-fold this year to 3,448 people as of August 16, despite a 26.6 percent drop in overall seaborne arrivals to Spain, according to interior ministry data.

Migrant rights groups say heightened security across the Mediterranean is likely driving more migrants to risk the perilous Atlantic crossing.

A total of 239 migrants have died trying to reach the Canaries between January 1 and August 19, compared to 210 during all of last year, and just 43 in 2018, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).



Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.

They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There was no immediate response from the prime minister's office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.

"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria," they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.

It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.

"The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented," the petition stated.

Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.

Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.