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ARCHIVED - Migrant mother gives birth to twins off coast of Gran Canaria
One of the babies had sadly died before the migrants were rescued off Spain’s Canary Islands
Sadly, incidents involving irregular immigrants attempting to illegally travel to Spain are all too common, but a particularly tragic event on Thursday October 14 saw a woman give birth to twin babies, one of whom died, aboard a boat destined for Gran Canaria. According to sources from the Red Cross and the Maritime Rescue, the expectant mother was travelling in the small boat with 50 others, many of them pregnant women and children.
The unfortunate woman gave birth just four hours before being rescued. By the time emergency services intercepted the vessel, one of the twins had already passed away, while the mother and her surviving infant were transferred to the Juan Negrin Hospital in Gran Canaria.
In addition to this boat, Salvamento Maritimo reported that two other boats were located in the south of the Island, one with 30 occupants, all men of sub-Saharan origin, and another with 60 from the Maghreb region of Africa. They were all transferred to the port of Arguineguin where they joined 198 occupants of a canoe that had been rescued 25.9 kilometres off the coast.
Gerardo Santana of the Red Cross has indicated that the final figure could be even higher than 200, which would mean it’s the largest number of people arriving in a single canoe to the Canary Islands in the last decade. The record was set by a gondola that arrived in Los Cristianos in Tenerife with 230 people on board in September 2008.
The men who arrived on the canoe, many of whom were minors, had to be treated for dehydration and sun exposure having been at sea for four or five days. The Red Cross has indicated that the migrants were extremely lucky to survive as they were only 14 miles from Güigüí when they were rescued, an area known to have deadly currents.
Image: Cruz Rioja
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