More than 1,000 Africans have died in the past four months while trying to sail in small boats from Mauritania to Spain's Canary Islands

Associated Press:

Ahmed Ould Haya, head of Mauritania's branch of the International Committee of the Red Crescent, spoke a day after reporting the death of at least 45 would-be immigrants in two accidents Saturday and early Monday. (Full story)

He told the Spanish radio station Cadena Ser that 40 percent of the boats that leave Mauritania for the Canary Islands -- a trip of at least 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) over the Atlantic -- sink or capsize along the way.

Since November 10, between 1,200 and 1,300 people have died trying to reach the Spanish islands from Mauritania, Ould Haya said.

He said the Africans who attempt the journey are desperate to reach Europe in search of a better life. "For them is it like a game of Russian roulette: either I make it or I die."

The Spanish Interior Ministry's top official in the Canary Islands, Jose Segura, said that while hundreds of Africans have died in the past few months trying to make the trip, three or four boats reach the islands each day.

So far this year, more than 2,000 immigrants have made it to the islands, he told Cadena Ser.

Every year thousands of Africans try to reach Spain by one of two traditional routes -- across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland, or leaving from the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara across Atlantic waters to the Canary Islands.

Moroccan police have cracked down on the dangerous departures, though, causing many to head further south and leave from Mauritania, the newspaper El Pais reported Tuesday.

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