[Feature photo: file].
Spain’s coastguard said it rescued 86 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa aboard a boat near the Canary Islands that had been spotted earlier on Monday by a rescue plane.
The Salvamento Maritimo coastguard service said they had found the boat with six females and 80 males on board as rescuers were searching for a missing migrant boat that had “left Senegal with around 200 people on board”.
It did not indicate the ages of those rescued.
When a rescue plane spotted the vessel about 71 nautical miles south of the island of Gran Canaria, it was initially thought to have “around 200 people on board”, a spokeswoman said.
“We can’t be 100 per cent sure but it’s likely it is the same boat,” she said.
But the coastguard later acknowledged that the estimate by the plane’s crew was incorrect. “It is difficult to determine the number of people from the air,” she told AFP.
A rescue ship brought the migrants to the port of Arguineguin on Gran Canaria, where they were greeted by Red Cross workers who provided them with medical care.
The situation remains confusing, however, and the spokeswoman told AFP she was not able to say whether there was another boat adrift in the same area with 200 people on board.
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