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Rabat – A Royal Navy patrol boat in Dakhla saved on Saturday 196 sub-Saharan migrants from a failing canoe roughly 157 kilometers northwest of the city. Among those rescued, the coast guards found one deceased individual.
The migrants were en route to the Canary Islands when their vessel failed. The Royal Navy patrol boat responded, providing emergency medical care on board before safely transporting the survivors to the port of Dakhla.
Once there, they were handed over to the Royal Gendarmerie for further processing and administrative procedures.
The body of the deceased migrant was taken to the morgue at Hassan II Hospital in Dakhla by Civil Protection teams.
The rescue operation is part of Morocco’s continuous efforts to fight against illegal immigration and human trafficking.
In June 2023, data from Morocco’s Ministry of Interior unveiled the country’s ongoing efforts to curb irregular migration attempts towards Europe thwarted a staggering 366,000 irregular migration attempts over the previous five years.
The data shows that in 2022 alone, the country aborted 70,781 attempts at irregular immigration.
The operations haven’t solely focused on interception; they’ve also prioritized humanitarian aid.
Morocco has managed to rescue more than 90,000 irregular migrants over the same period, especially on the maritime front. Morocco’s Royal Navy extracted over 12,000 migrants from dangerous conditions in 2022.
The country’s approach to curbing irregular migration equally extends to dismantling criminal networks involved in irregular migration.
Moroccan police dismantled 290 networks in 2022; it also foiled 117 other networks by the end of May 2023, bringing the total number of dismantled networks to 1,500 over the past five years.
Read Also: Morocco’s Border Control Foiled 87,000 Irregular Migration Attempts in 2023
