The maritime troops of the Civil Guard have found this Tuesday the body of an adult male just one nautical mile from the coast of Torre de la Horadada, the coastal area of the municipality of Pilar de la Horadada (Alicante). Thus, the total number of deaths from what could be the shipwreck of a boat from the coast of North Africa rises to eight, from which only one survivor came out alive, rescued last Saturday in Xàbia. However, there is still no official confirmation linking the floating bodies with this vessel. The investigators try to identify the corpses and relate them to the documentation found with the saved crew member.
Throughout the morning, several boats and patrol boats of the Civil Guard have navigated the waters of Torrevieja and Pilar de la Horadada, south of the province of Alicante. The size of the boat rescued on Saturday, six meters long, and the fact that this type of migratory boat is usually full of people led to the suspicion that the number of deceased could exceed ten. However, until 1:05 p.m. today, the number of alleged victims of the shipwreck has not increased. Aboard an inflatable boat, three Civil Guard operatives have removed from the water with a net the body of an adult male who was drifting a nautical mile from the shore, just under two kilometers away.
This victim is the fifth to appear in Alicante waters since last Sunday at noon, when the search began in an operation deployed in the provinces of Alicante and Murcia. Three people were found on the coast of La Manga del Mar Menor and four more on the Alicante coast. The sizing of the clothes indicates that one of the shipwrecked crew members was a boy of about four years and another of the deceased, also a minor, is around ten years old. Among the rescued dead bodies is a woman.
Meanwhile, the sole survivor of the tragedy has remained in the Manises Hospital (Valencia), to which he was transferred after a helicopter from the Valencian Maritime Rescue base located him in a drifting boat without an engine at 30 miles east of Cape La Nao, in Xàbia (Alicante). Maritime Rescue sources confirm that it was the skipper of a sailboat who spotted the boat and gave the alert. Once safe, he claimed to be 21 years old and of Moroccan nationality, a frequent origin among migrants who cross the Mediterranean towards the coastal strip between Almería and Valencia, who are mostly Algerians.
In the Xàbia patera, the researchers found documentation belonging to those who could have gotten on board. Despite the fact that the state of the bodies makes their identification difficult, the agents try to relate them to the supporting documents, to definitively establish that they were traveling aboard a boat when, for reasons still unknown, they were shipwrecked on the high seas.
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