The deployment of two Spanish surveillance planes to watch for migrant boats heading on the treacherous route from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands has enabled authorities to stop 59 canoes from Senegal and Gambia carrying around 7,200 migrants in the past two months, a senior official said Friday.
The boats that were stopped accounted for around half of those that officials believed would otherwise be heading to the Canary Islands off northwest Africa over that period, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
