GENEVA: Spanish maritime rescue services have brought ashore 90 migrants pulled up from boats as they attempted to cross the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.
The route, the shortest from northern Africa into Europe, is gaining popularity among migrants looking fleeing conflicts or poverty.
A Spanish Maritime Rescue Service vessel disembarked at mid-day on Friday 44 sub-Saharan African migrants, including three women, at the port of Tarifa.
The service said they had been traveling in five different recreational boats.
Another rescue boat brought 46 more migrants from Morocco one hour later, including four women and dozens of teenagers.
The renewed popularity of the so-called Western Mediterranean route is straining Spain’s law-enforcement response and its social safety networks.
French President Emmanuel Macron says the European Union deal on migration meets demands from Italy’s new anti-migrant populist government.
Macron said “it’s up to Italy to choose” to accept centers where asylum-requests from migrants from rescue ships would be processed with European financing and support.
In a news conference Friday in Brussels, he says that migrants who don’t fill criteria to be granted asylum would be sent back to their countries.
Macron also commented on the EU proposal of setting up “disembarkation platforms” for migrants in Northern African countries in coordination with the U.N.’s refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration.
Macron said such platforms could be “occasionally” set up in agreement with the concerned countries in places where the EU could send staff to process asylum requests.
