An immigrant boat with 47 young male passengers on board, including two who claim to be underage, was towed into port in Arrecife, Lanzarote

An immigrant boat with 47 young male passengers on board, including two who claim to be underage, was towed into port in Arrecife, Lanzarote, on Wednesday after the boat was spotted some 50 miles to the east of island after three days adrift.

The migrants said they were Sahrawi, and some were seen holding up Western Sahara flags and shouting out ‘Viva el Sahara!’ and ‘Viva el Polisario!’ as they came into port.

The Coastguard were mobilised for their rescue after a fishing boat reported hearing over the radio a call from a merchant ship that it had spotted the migrants’ boat.

A spokesman for the local Sahrawi community on Lanzarote told the EFE news agency that they had been alerted from Laayoune that young members of the Sahrawi movement could be travelling on the boat. Bachir Mansur said the boat’s arrival in the Canaries could be a tactic by the Moroccan government to remove rebellious Sahrawis from their territory by providing them with boats to leave Western Sahara.