Spanish Search for African Migrants Lost in Atlantic

Spanish rescue services resumed their search yesterday for a boatload of illegal immigrants lost on the Atlantic, as reports emerged that fishing canoes carrying Africans desperate to reach Europe were now setting out from as far away as Senegal, almost 1,000 miles to the south.

Air-sea rescue services from the Canary Islands had suspended their search at nightfall on Saturday. The migrants were spotted 130 miles off the Canaries in one of the rickety dug-outs known as pirogues that have been arriving from west Africa in recent months.

Most of the long, canoe-like vessels have set out from ports in northern Mauritania, about 500 miles south of the Canaries.

Between 1,000 and 1,700 people are thought to have died trying to make the crossing over the past five months. Up to 300 illegal immigrants a day have reached the Canary Islands in recent weeks.

The Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia quoted police yesterday as saying that a canoe that reached Tenerife last week bore Senegalese markings.

The pirogues that set out from the Nouadhibou area of Mauritania are usually 10 to 12 metres (33-39 ft) long, are rarely decorated colourfully and have a licence number that begins with NHB, La Vanguardia reported. But one vessel that sailed into the Tenerife resort of Los Cristianos last week, with about 70 people on board, was 20 metres long and decorated in Senegalese style.

"A police source said he was surprised, not by the fact that this had happened, but that a new route to rival that from Nouadhibou had opened up so quickly," La Vanguardia reported. It said police thought the vessel had started its journey from the Senegalese port of Saint-Louis.

Spain's Socialist government has been treating the new wave of immigration as both a humanitarian crisis and a policing problem.

Last week it set up a temporary camp in Mauritania for 400 of the thousands of people from across Africa who are said to be arriving at the port town of Nouadhibou. La Vanguardia said that, rather than operate as a refugee centre, the camp was to be used for detaining would-be migrants.

Spanish police have now also reportedly been sent south to the border between Senegal and Mauritania to investigate. Spain's Civil Guard is due to send four patrol vessels to Mauritania within the next few weeks.

Non-governmental organisations have expressed concern that an increased police presence may encourage the pirogues to head out into the open Atlantic, rather than hugging the African coastline - thus increasing the dangers faced during the long voyage north.