Spanish coast guard rescues baby born on inflatable boat carrying migrants to the The Canary Islandsauthorities said Wednesday.
The baby was recovered safely with its mother on Monday, the Coast Guard said in a statement. message on social media.
They were the last to make the crossing that saw thousands drowned as migrants tried to reach the Atlantic islands from Africa.
“Christmas ended in the Canaries with the rescue of a baby born while crossing the sea,” the coastguard said. “Our teams in the Canary Islands have started the year in the hard way.”
sea rescue / Leaflet via REUTERS
A coast guard boat “rescued a mother who was born aboard the inflatable vessel in which she was traveling with a large group of people.” Reuters news agency reported that the newborn was a girl.
The two were taken by helicopter to Arrecife on the island of Lanzarote, he said.
Domingo Trujillo, the captain of the group's rescue vessel, told the Spanish wire service EFE that the coast guard boat rescued a total of 60 people, including 14 women and four children.
“The baby was crying, which showed us that it was alive and that there were no problems, and we asked permission from the woman to remove it and clean it,” he said. “The umbilical cord was cut with one of her fellow travelers already. The only thing we did was to check on the child, give him to his mother and wrap him for the journey.”
Trujillo told Reuters that the rescue teams were tired but motivated by their mission.
“Almost every night we leave at dawn and come back late,” he told Reuters. “This case is very positive, because it was with a newborn baby, but in all the services we do, even if we are tired, we know that we are helping people there the distress.”
A record number of 46,843 undocumented migrants will arrive in the Canary Islands in 2024 via the Atlantic route, official data showed this month.
Last June, a cruise ship saved 68 people away on a fishing boat off the Canary Islands. A cruise ship passenger from Vancouver, Canada told CBS News that it took the migrants an hour or two to save the ship and that about five people on the boat were dead.
