A woman has died following a shark attack on a British-flagged catamaran as she was being rushed to a hospital in the Canary Islands.
The 30-year-old German woman lost her struggle for survival in a Spanish Air Force helicopter while being evacuated to a hospital in Gran Canaria. She was officially pronounced dead after arriving at Doctor Negrin Hospital in the Gran Canaria capital, Las Palmas, on Monday night.
Reports indicate that the shark bit off her leg while she was on the catamaran in international waters, 278 miles south-west of Gran Canaria’s airport and approximately 110 miles east of Dakhla city in the disputed territory of Western Sahara, currently occupied by Morocco.
The catamaran, known as Dalliance Chichester, is a British-flagged vessel that departed from the Spanish holiday island on September 14. Spanish Coastguards reportedly notified their Moroccan counterparts and UK coastguards due to the catamaran’s origin.
Spanish coastguards responded by alerting nearby vessels about the emergency. One vessel approached Dalliance Chichester to provide medicine for the injured woman to the other crew members.
However, local reports claim that Moroccan authorities declined to transfer the injured woman to Rabat for emergency medical care. The unnamed woman was declared dead shortly after 11pm yesterday after suffering cardiac arrest in the Spanish military helicopter. The shark attack is believed to have occurred around 4pm the same day.
There have been no recorded shark attacks in the area where the incident occurred yesterday.