Move FM Global News

GENEVA, Switzerland – A massive sea swell off the coast of Spain has struck at least six vessels carrying migrants.

Many of the migrants were thrown overboard. A dozen people have been confirmed to have drowned, and another twelve, including a woman who was pregnant, are missing, presumed drowned.

All 6 boats were damaged and had become disabled. The remaining passengers, mostly migrants, and crew were left stranded.

The six boats have now been rescued, the UN Refugee Agency UNCHR has confirmed.

Briefing reporters in Geneva on Friday, UNHCR spokesperson, Elizabeth Throssell, said that colleagues in the field had reported that bodies had been found on two of the boats: “You can imagine how traumatizing that was for the people who were rescued,” she said.

According to news reports, the migrants had sailed from North Africa.

On one of the six vessels found adrift in the Straits of Gibraltar, in the western Mediterranean Sea, 33 people had been rescued, but twelve had died and a further 12 were missing.

On another of the boats, fifty seven people had been on board, including one that had already died by the time of the rescue.

“There was a massive sea-swell that threw them into the water”, said Throssell, who said that among the survivors was a mother and her two-year-old child who was evacuated by helicopter, after she was found to be suffering from hypothermia.

She added that many of the survivors were being held at detention centres at the Port of Almeria in Spain.

“Our implementing partner is there to provide the people with information and support and to help any potential protection and other needs and of course to promote access to the asylum process for those who may need it,” she said.

Fatalities increasing off Spanish coas

Delivering the latest overall statistics on the deadly Mediterranean migration route, UN migration agency IOM spokesperson, Joel Millman, told journalists that as of 19 December, 113,000 migrants had entered Europe by sea so far this year; the lowest recorded in five years.

But recently, the death rate for migrants attempting to reach Spain, had tragically begun to tick upwards, with 769 fatalities registered on the western Mediterranean migration route.

“That’s only slightly more than half of all on the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy, but what’s remarkable is how rapidly that number has increased over the last three months,” Millman said.

It was likely that there will be “more incidents like this” in the next ten days, he said.