Thursday, August 17, 2023, 10:06 p.m.
Maritime Rescue personnel rescued this Thursday two boats with 15 and 14 people on board 50 and 33 miles off the coast of Alicante, respectively. Among the occupants helped and treated are two underage girls and a man with second-degree burns while they are looking for two missing persons who would be traveling in one of the boats, after a third person who was initially not located was found alive.
According to the Red Cross, the first boat arrived at the port of Alicante after being rescued by the Salvamar Leo de Salvamento Marítimo ship at about 50 miles around 6:30 a.m. this Thursday. About 15 people were traveling on the boat who were being treated since nine in the morning.
Hours later, 14 people who were traveling aboard another boat were rescued floating off the coast of Torrevieja: eleven men, one woman and their two daughters (one seven years old and the other a few months old). Seven of the men have been transferred to a health center for presenting fever and second degree burns.
According to the NGO, the occupants have reported that up to 17 people were traveling in this boat, which is why the search for three missing persons was initially activated, one of whom was finally located alive and transferred to the hospital. A fishing boat has located the immigrants who were traveling in this second boat floating in the sea. After the rescue, the occupants have been transferred to the port of Alicante to be treated, some of them by helicopter, Red Cross sources report.
This is the second and third boat to reach the Alicante coast in 24 hours after the one that was rescued this Wednesday with 13 people on board, all men and one of them a minor, between Altea and Calp. Two other boats arrived in the Valencian Community between last Saturday and Sunday morning: one to Xàbia with about ten people and another to Vila Joiosa whose occupants included three women, three children and two babies.
Faced with these “small mass arrivals” of boats on the coasts, the Red Cross teams remain pre-alerted to expedite the care of migrants. The teams include logistics workers, health workers, translators, mediators or psychologists. From the entity they appreciate the humanitarian action of this fishing boat, which has rescued the occupants of the boat and has subsequently contacted the organization to inquire about their state of health.
For its part, the Consell has regretted in a statement the disappearance of immigrants in one of the boats and has announced that it will provide “the necessary support to the victims of this tragedy within the scope of its powers.” In addition, it has expressed its will “to fight, within the scope of its powers, against the illegal trafficking of people and against those who support and favor it.”
Both the Second Vice President and Minister of Social Services, Equality and Housing, Susana Camarero, and the Minister of Justice, Elisa Núñez, are coordinating the assistance and support that the Generalitat Valenciana will provide to the rescued people.
For this purpose, they have contacted the Government Delegation in the Valencian Community, with Maritime Rescue and with the Red Cross of Alicante “in order to activate the necessary mechanisms, public and private, to provide the necessary help to these people in need », They have indicated in the statement.
Minister Núñez has urged the central government “to stop the flows of illegal immigration, to promote tougher penalties against mafias and to put an end to the pull-effect policies that take the lives of thousands of people every year.”
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