A perilous and often deadly journey for asylum seekers across the Atlantic ended in a miracle of life this week with the birth of a baby girl on a migrant boat bound for Spain’s Canary Islands.
Photos of the moment the dinghy occupants were rescued showed the newborn baby lying on his mother’s lap, resting inside.
The boat was spotted off the coast of Lanzarote on Monday, when Spain celebrated Epiphany (also known as Three Kings Day). Rescuers said the trip was to honor the day the three wise men brought gifts to baby Jesus.
“Christmas in the Canary Islands ends with the rescue of a baby born during the voyage,” Salvamento Maritimo, the Spanish government’s maritime rescue agency, said in an article posted on X on Wednesday.
The agency said rescue teams were able to safely extract the people on board the dinghy and the mother and her newborn child were airlifted to Arrecife, a city in eastern Lanzarote. Local media reported that the two were taken to a nearby hospital.
Salvamento Maritimo did not respond to a request for comment on the condition of the mother and child on Thursday. Reuters reported, citing local government and medical authorities, that the child was a girl.
Domingo Trujillo, the captain of the agency’s rescue boat, told broadcaster TVE that rescuers were aware that there was a pregnant woman in the dinghy.
“What surprised me…was a completely naked baby that was born 10, 15, 20 minutes ago,” he said, according to Reuters. She said she covered the baby and stroked it to stop it from crying.
“This was the best gift we received because it’s Three Kings Day,” helicopter commander Alvaro Serrano Perez told Reuters.
The incident comes amid a growing number of migrants in the Canary Islands from countries such as Mali, Senegal and Morocco.
According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, the Canary Islands route recorded the highest number of migrants for the second year in a row in 2024, with around 47,000 people entering Spain, accounting for 73% of irregular migrants.
According to Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish migrant rights group, 10,457 people will die or go missing while trying to reach Spain via unofficial sea routes in 2024, with the highest number of deaths occurring in the Canary Islands. Ta. NBC News could not independently verify the data.
Salvamento Maritimo said this was not Trujillo’s first rescue. He said he responded to a similar incident in 2020 in which a woman had just given birth on a transatlantic dinghy.
“We take this opportunity to pay tribute to Domingo and the rest of the crew, who do their best every day to help the thousands of people trying to reach the Canary Islands,” the agency said. said.
