Grim toll of African refugees mounts on Spanish beaches

Three new tragedies have raised fears that this summer could see a record number of would-be migrants killed in desperate bids to reach Europe

A series of tragedies involving migrants off the coast of Spain have raised fears that the summer could see a record-breaking death toll in the region, as refugees embark on increasingly perilous routes in smaller boats to avoid detection.

According to human rights agencies, there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of people attempting to make the sea crossing from North Africa to southern Europe, many of them from sub-Saharan conflict zones such as Eritrea and Somalia.

After a week of disasters and rescues at sea that has shocked Spaniards, authorities have identified the coastal port of Almería as the new favoured destination for human traffickers attempting to avoid increased police patrols and surveillance. A total of 51 migrant deaths at sea has been reported this year, but the actual mortality rate is certain to be far higher, since the bodies of many refugees are never recovered. The Red Cross estimates between 2,000 and 3,000 people die trying to reach Spain every year.

In the past few weeks there has also been a surge in the number of migrants landing on Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost island - only 120 kilometres from the African coast. One official from UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, said that, since the start of the summer and the arrival of calmer seas, the number of arrivals on Lampedusa had doubled, and it is presumed that many more have been lost at sea.

The fate of the stream of refugees dominated Spanish media last week after a series of horrific episodes underlined the risks that migrants were prepared to take to reach Europe. One boat was spotted drifting off the port of Almería containing 33 survivors, weak with exhaustion. The group had set off a week earlier from the Moroccan port of Alhucema, but the boat's fragile motor broke down in rough seas. Fifteen of the boat's occupants, including nine children aged under four, had died from hunger or thirst during the journey. The bodies of the children, rotting in the sun, were thrown overboard by their parents. One Nigerian mother, whose two children died en route, repeatedly asked Red Cross workers in Almería: 'Where are my babies?'

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Zapatero, said the images of the stricken boat 'should be imprinted in the minds of each and every one of us'. Francisco Vicente, the head of the Red Cross in Almería, said: 'In five years, this is the worst I have ever seen.'

That tragedy was only one in a sequence of disasters. Last Monday, 14 Africans were declared missing, presumed dead, off Motril in Andalucía, after their boat capsized in rough seas. Crews pulled 23 people out of the water, including a pregnant woman. On Friday, a kayak with 59 migrants aboard, four of them dead, was intercepted off La Gomera in the Canary Islands. The kayak had drifted in the Mediterranean for two weeks after setting off from Guinea-Bissau. Ten more men were said to have died and been thrown overboard during the voyage; two more have since died in Spanish hospitals.

Police say African migrants pay on average £1,000 to trafficking gangs to reach the Moroccan coast. They are then packed into small boats, with poor satellite navigation systems and old motors.

Aid agencies claim that the recent crackdown on illegal immigration is worsening the crisis by encouraging migrants to make riskier and longer journeys. Angel Madero, president of the refugee aid group Acoge in Andalucía, said: 'They invest millions in security systems and the legal entry systems are more difficult. Necessity makes [migrants] carry on coming and the consequence is they take more dangerous routes.'

In 2005, border controls were toughened between Spain's north African enclaves, Melilla and Ceuta, after thousands of migrants repeatedly tried to gain access to Spanish territory. Trafficking gangs subsequently changed tack, channelling migrants through the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou towards the Canary Islands.

But after hundreds of migrants in tiny kayaks were picked up by patrols, partly funded by Frontex, the EU border security agency, gangs started to target Almería and other Spanish Mediterranean areas like Granada, Murcia and Ibiza.

Almería is now seen as the weakest link along the costas. The gangs are exploiting this part of southern Spain, made famous by Sergio Leone as a location for filming spaghetti westerns, because of poor coastguard detection services. But the gruelling 100-mile journey between Morocco and Almería means an estimated one in three dinghies never arrives.

Laura Boldrini, of UNHCR's Rome office, said that refugees arriving in Lampedusa were making journeys of up to 180 nautical miles aboard 'very unsafe' inflatables put together in workshops on the north African coast. Historically, around 80 per cent of arrivals in Lampedusa have set off from Libya, with the remainder coming from Tunisia.

Typically, said Boldrini, the inflatables consisted of just two inflated chambers and a crudely made wooden deck. They would normally be expected to carry, at most, 10 people, but the standard human cargo reaching Lampedusa on an inflatable this year numbered between 40 and 50. Such boats are principally designed for inshore and inland waters. Coastguards and others who monitor the flow of migrants in the Mediterranean are convinced that entire groups whose boats capsize in rough weather perish without anyone knowing.

Crucially, the traffickers do not travel with their 'passengers'. Boats are equipped with a modest engine and take about a day and half to complete the journey. 'But some take a lot longer because they lose their way', said Boldrini. 'The migrants rarely have any experience of operating a boat. Sometimes the traffickers give them a compass. Sometimes they give them a satellite phone. Sometimes they give them nothing at all. In the past we've had people who have spent 15 or even 20 days adrift.'