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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Sam Jones in Madrid

Record numbers of refugees arrive in Canary Islands by boat

A Boat arrives with 41 people in at the port of La Restinga, in El Hierro, Canary Islands. Some of its occupants, visibly weak, have stated that they had been at sea for ten days.
A Boat arrives with 41 people in at the port of La Restinga, in El Hierro, Canary Islands. Some of its occupants, visibly weak, have stated that they had been at sea for ten days. Photograph: Gelmert Finol/EPA

Nearly 32,000 men, women and children have reached the Canary Islands by boat so far this year on the world’s deadliest migration route, breaking a 17-year-old record for arrivals in the Spanish archipelago.

On Friday and Saturday, four boats carrying a total of 739 people arrived at El Hierro, the smallest and most westerly of the Canary Islands, along with the bodies of two people who had died on the perilous Atlantic route from Africa. A further two people died in hospital.

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