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After the deaths of at least two migrants this week, activists criticized Morocco and Spain for their inaction and slow response to help the migrants trying to reach Spain by boat.

According to the Spanish campaign group Caminando Fronteras, which receives calls from migrants or their families about boats in distress, 37 people are declared missing after their boat sank on Wednesday. 

Spanish rescue services announced the death of two people - a man and a child - and the rescue of 24 people 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the Canary Islands. Neither the Spanish rescue team nor Morocco confirmed the presence of any other passengers.

Throwing blame from side to side

Caminando Fronteras' Helena Maleno claimed that Spanish rescue aircraft and a Moroccan navy vessel arrived 17 hours after the boat sent out a distress call. 

She told broadcaster Canal Sur that the Spanish plane located the inflatable raft around 8 pm on Tuesday, and they decided it was Morocco's responsibility to intervene, but Morocco took hours before acting.

Malena further stated that "people were panicking on an inflatable raft, without having eaten, exhausted." A recording of the pilot who saw the boat was broadcast by Radio Cadena Ser and said that "around 50 people [were] on board." The Spanish rescue ship was an hour away from the boat.

Read next: Migrant boat heading from Morocco to Spain sinks, 13 bodies recovered

Spain's rescue service denied responsibility for the deaths by arguing that their rescue ship had to go back to port after rescuing 63 people from another sunken vessel.

They insisted that the raft was in waters under the joint responsibility of Morocco and Spain. Morocco's navy claimed it would take over coordination of the rescue since it was closer to the African coast than to the Canary Islands.

Spanish government spokesperson Isabel Rodriguez said she had no detailed information about the incident, while Spain's Defensor del Pueblo (Defender of the People, a parliament commission to defend citizens' fundamental rights) announced that an investigation into the incident has been launched. 

EU's slow killing of children

Spain claimed on Thursday to have rescued at least 350 migrants from five vessels over a 24-hour period.

Meanwhile, Save the Children compared the incident to the ill-fated boat incident in the Ionian Sea off Greece. "How many more children will need to die on deadly sea routes before the EU finally takes action?" it said.

Read more: Greece wreck survivors retell story of coastguard abuse, complicity

Caminando Fronteras estimated, in its report published at the end of last year, that since 2018 over 11,200 died or were missing after trying to reach Spain - an average of six people a day.

The Melilla and Ceuta enclaves are some of the most frequently used crossings that Africans take to escape poverty. The border police monitor the enclaves to prevent migrants from crossing illegally.

On June 28, 2022, a rights group reported that a massacre that brutally killed 23 mostly-African refugees coming from Chad, Niger, South Sudan, and Sudan took place at the Melilla crossing.