The bodies of 21 people thought to be migrants trying to reach Spain have washed up on the shores of the Mediterranean this month, the U.N. migration agency said in statement on Friday.
The latest deaths bring the total of Mediterranean migrant deaths this year to 1,586, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
The remains of nine sub-Saharan Africans were found on Sept. 4 on a beach near Marsa Ben M’Hidi, in Algeria’s province of Tlemcen, about 200 km from the Spanish coast.
The next day, four more bodies were recovered on the neighbouring beach of Saïdia, across the border in Morocco.
On Sept. 10, the remains of six migrants including two women and one child washed ashore at Driouch, near Nador, Morocco, IOM said.
The body of a woman was found on Las Salinas beach, in Roquetas de Mar, Almería on Sept. 11, and the body of a young Sub-Saharan African man was retrieved by fishermen near La Almadraba, in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, on Sept. 13.