West Africans are dying trying to reach the Canary Islands

IN THE DEAD of night Abdou Aziz Thiaw and Malick Niang, two brothers, recently squeezed into a battered wooden boat in Mbour, a fishing town in Senegal. Along with some 50 others they hoped to evade police patrol boats and survive the voyage of 1,500km to the Spanish Canary Islands—and, once there, to go on to Europe. Weeks later their mother, Amimarr, got a call. Abdou Aziz had made it. But—her voice falters—Malick died at sea. “No mother in the world wants to see her sons go through that ordeal,” she whispers. “But we must not stop them. There is no alternative.”This year at least 529 migrants are known to have died trying to reach the Canary Islands from Africa. Almost 400 more, in nine missing boats, are presumed dead. The true total is probably higher still. Migrants are casting off in boats along the whole coast, from Morocco to Guinea (see map). The risk of dying on the Canarian route may be six times higher than making the shorter trip to Europe across the Mediterranean. Despite such danger, more than 18,000 migrants have arrived in the Canary Islands this year, ten times more than in the comparable period last year. About 9,000 have arrived in the past 30 days.