A fishing boat said to be carrying 170 people, including children, capsized off Mauritania – along the Atlantic migration route from West Africa to the Canary Islands.
Saturday 06 July 2024 16:29, United Kingdom
At least 89 people died when a migrant boat capsized off Mauritania, the West African country’s state news agency and the head of a fishing union said.
Another 70 people are said to be still missing and nine people, including a five-year-old girl, have been rescued.
The Atlantic migration route from the West Coast Africa in the Canary Islands it is one of the deadliest in the world and summer is its busiest season.
On Thursday, the coast guard reportedly recovered the bodies of 89 people bound for Europe.
Yali Fall, chairman of the fishing association in the southwestern town of Ndiago, said the death toll had further risen to 105 and locals had been burying bodies that had washed ashore since Monday.
“For three days we buried the dead whose bodies were found,” he said.
In the first five months of 2024, an unprecedented nearly 5,000 people died at sea trying to reach the Canary Islands, migrant rights group Walking Borders said in June.
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Arrivals to the islands also rose fivefold to more than 16,500 from a year ago, according to figures from Spain’s interior ministry.
Local media reported that the vessel was a fishing vessel and that the vessel was mainly Senegalese and Gambian nationals.