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Get you up to speed: Canary Islands’ El Hierro declares emergency amid migrant, refugee influx
El Hierro, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, has declared a state of emergency following the arrival of over 3,300 migrants and refugees by boat since the start of November. Authorities are seeking assistance from the Spanish government as local conditions have become increasingly challenging for the island’s 11,400 residents.
Maritime rescue services have rescued 3,261 migrants and refugees off the coast of the Canary Islands in the first six days of November. Officials are seeking temporary accommodation for the new arrivals, as conditions at the island’s hospital have been described as “undesirable.”
El Hierro has officially declared a state of emergency and has requested assistance from the Spanish government due to the arrival of over 3,300 migrants and refugees since the start of November. Regional leader Fernando Clavijo noted that the current situation is “absolutely unsustainable,” prompting measures such as diverting buses to support migration operations and increasing medical staff on the island.
What remains unclear — It is not specified how the Spanish government plans to assist El Hierro amid the emergency declaration.
El Hierro declares emergency as migrant and refugee arrivals surge
News|MigrationCanary Islands’ El Hierro declares emergency amid migrant, refugee influx
El Hierro asks Spanish government for help after more than 3,300 people arrived on boats since start of November.
Published On 8 Nov 20268 Nov 2026
Published On 8 Nov 20268 Nov 2026Authorities of El Hierro, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, have declared an emergency and asked the government in Madrid for help after a surge in migrants and refugees arriving on boats.
“We are very concerned… by this sharp increase in arrivals,” Alpidio Armas, head of the governing council for El Hierro, one of Europe’s main entry points for migrants and refugees from West Africa, told Spanish television on Saturday.
“This is precisely what has led us to declare an emergency in order to ensure a framework of cooperation with higher-level institutions.”
More than 3,300 people have arrived on the island in about 30 boats since the start of November, according to local authorities. El Hierro has about 11,400 residents.
Officials are seeking temporary accommodation for the new arrivals, while conditions at the island’s hospital have become “undesirable”, Armas said.
The situation is “absolutely unsustainable”, the Reuters news agency quoted Fernando Clavijo, the regional leader of the Canary Islands, as saying on Friday.
Maritime rescue services rescued 3,261 migrants and refugees off the coast of the Canary Islands in the first six days of November.
Clavijo said the numbers were approaching the record levels seen in 2024, and on some days, the current pace was even higher.
Buses have been diverted to migration operations, and medical staff have been brought in from other islands, he said.
Deadly route
The Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the world’s deadliest migration crossings.
Two people were found dead on a boat heading for the Canaries this week, and five others are believed to have died during the voyage, according to the AFP news agency, citing survivor accounts.
At least nine migrants or refugees have died off the islands in recent weeks.
Arrivals reached a record of more than 46,000 in 2024, then fell sharply due to tighter surveillance and greater cooperation with countries of origin and transit.
Between January and October, 13,327 irregular migrants and refugees arrived by sea, 5.5 percent fewer than in the same period last year, according to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior.
Patrols off Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco have pushed departures further south, from The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, making crossings longer.
Senegalese police said on Saturday that they intercepted 142 migrants, including women and young children, off Dakar.
October 12, 2024
6:18 am
‘Cheer up, you caught the bad guy,’ says killer Virginia McCullough as she is arrested for murdering her parents
A woman who murdered her parents “in cold blood” before hiding them in makeshift tombs for four years told officers to “cheer up, you caught the bad guy” as she was arrested in her home.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, shortly afterwards in 2019.
She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions until she was finally caught in 2023.
In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed – and eerily calm – McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually.
“It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”
She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink then put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.
McCullough, having been arrested on suspicion of double murder, told an officer: “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
She added: “I know I don’t seem 100% evil.”
At the police station, she told officers where a kitchen knife was, which she described as a “murder weapon”, and a hammer which she said “will still have blood on it”.
McCullough, of Pump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday with a minimum term of 36 years at Chelmsford Crown Court, after she admitted to their murders between 17 and 20 June 2019 at an earlier hearing at the same court.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard how she hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks.
The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
But concerns over Mr and Mrs McCullough’s welfare were raised in September 2023 by a GP at their registered practice, and Essex County Council’s safeguarding team referred these to police.
The GP had not seen the couple for some time and said Mr McCullough had failed to collect medication and attend scheduled appointments. It was found McCullough had frequently cancelled appointments, using a range of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.
It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.
Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.
“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name.”
She added: “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
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@MahaGaza
: the real number exceeds 400,000
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Gosh he’ll soon be a true blue Tory at this rate
Or far far worse
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To address hardship & the climate crisis, the government must keep the £2 cap & make public transport accessible for all.
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November 23, 2024
8:25 am
Defense alliance NATO chief Mark Rutte has met US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss global security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson.
The meeting took place in Palm Beach, Florida.
During his first term as US president, 2017-2020, Trump pushed for European NATO countries to spend more on defense and described the alliance’s cost-sharing as unfair to the US.
Rutte took over as NATO chief from Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in November.
Before taking office in January, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth for the post of defense secretary, which has raised eyebrows among many allies.
Hegseth, 44, has served as an infantry captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no senior military or government officer experience.
November 23, 2024
8:25 am
November 23, 2024
8:17 am
Multiple missiles were fired in an airstrike towards a densely populated part of Lebanon’s capital early on Saturday.
The huge airstrike targeted Beirut’s Basta neighbourhood, and no prior warnings were given by the Israeli military. The largely residential area was struck last month.
At least one violent explosion was heard across the city, Reuters witnesses said, and plumes of smoke could be seen. Scenes of massive destruction at the site were shared online, including a massive crater in the ground.
“Beirut, the capital, woke up to a horrific massacre, as the Israeli enemy’s air force completely destroyed an eight-story residential building with five missiles on Al-Mamoun Street in Basta,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
The health ministry put the initial death toll at four, with 23 wounded. The number is expected to climb in the coming hours as search and rescue efforts continue.
It came after a long day of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have been non-stop since last week.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group escalated into a full-blown war in mid-September.
Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the eastern Beqaa region, and has sent ground troops across the border. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel.
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