A young child’s body that washed up on the beach near the city of Tarragona (Catalonia) a week ago is the daughter of migrants from a shipwreck that killed all 15 people aboard back in April, the police said on Tuesday.
The eight-month-old girl was travelling with her parents aboard a dinghy that left Algeria on 21 March and sank off the Balearic Islands on 6 April. The infant’s body was initially thought to belong to a 2- to 4-year-old child.
After finding the body on 11 July in Roda de Berà, a seaside town on the Costa Daurada between Barcelona and Tarragona, about 200 km northwest of the island of Mallorca, police analysed a genetic sample and determined that it matched that of a woman whose body was recovered after the April shipwreck.
Including the baby and her mother, eight bodies of migrants who drowned in the incident have now been found.
Migrants habitually try to reach Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast from Algeria. According to Spanish migrant charity Walking Borders, the route has been the second-most deadly in the Mediterranean for migrants over the past five years, with an estimated 464 people dying in 43 shipwrecks in 2022 alone.
Us informem que aquesta matinada ha aparegut a la riba del mar, a la platja Costa Daurada, el cadàver d'un nen d'entre dos i tres anys d'edat.
— Ajuntament de Roda de Berà (@ajrodadebera) July 11, 2023
La zona està perimetrada i s'està a l'espera que el jutge faci l'aixecamenet del cadàver.
Us demanem que eviteu anar-hi 🙏 pic.twitter.com/P4uEWjEgih
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