BARCELONA (Reuters) – A baby’s body that washed up on a Spanish beach near the Mediterranean city of Tarragona a week ago is that of a migrants’ daughter from a shipwreck that killed all the 15 people aboard in April, police said on Tuesday.
The eight-month-old was travelling with her parents aboard a dinghy that left Algeria on March 21 and sank off Spain’s Balearic islands on April 6.
After finding the body on July 11 in Roda de Bera, a seaside town on Spain’s Golden Coast, about 200 km (124 miles) 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 wreck.
Including the baby and her mother, eight bodies of migrants who drowned in the incident have been found.
Illegal migrants habitually arrive on 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.
(Reporting by Joan Faus; Editing by Andrei Khalip and David Holmes)
