They spent more than a month crossing the Atlantic. A group of 101 migrants, one hundred Senegalese and one Guinean, left Senegal on July 10, heading for Spain, but the canoe ended up sinking on the Cape Verde coast. At least six people died and another 56 are missing, although the International Organization for Migration (IOM) also presumes deaths. In this way, the "estimated number of deaths" would rise to 63, calculates the spokesperson for the institution for the Horn of Africa, Yvonne Ndege.
The IOM confirmed the tragedy after the Government of Senegal reported late on Tuesday that 38 people who were trying to migrate to Spain in a canoe that sailed from the Senegalese town of Fass Boye, in the Thiès region, in the west , were rescued off the Cape Verde coast last Tuesday. In the boat, rescuers found the remains of seven people. Among the survivors are "four children between the ages of 12 and 16," the spokeswoman added.
The boat was sighted a day earlier 277 kilometers from the Cape Verdean island of Sal by a Spanish fishing boat that alerted the Cape Verdean authorities, reported the police of the archipelago, some 600 kilometers from the Senegalese coast.
Families in Fass Boye, a coastal city 145 kilometers north of the capital Dakar, contacted the Spanish group that monitors migrant boats Caminando Fronteras on July 20 after 10 days without hearing from their loved ones. reported the founder of the NGO, Helena Maleno Garzón. The president of the local fishermen's association, Cheikh Awa Boye, who has two nephews among the missing, confirmed that they "wanted to go to Spain."
The details of the tragedy have not yet been released. But the missing "are all dead," one of the survivors explained to his father over the phone, the local elected representative of Fass Boye, Moda Samb, told Agence France-Presse. It is "sadness, dismay, despair and total calm," added Samb, who indicated that 98% of the canoe's occupants are from Fass Boye: "They were born and raised" in this fishing town. "Families are waiting to find out if their children are among the survivors," he reported.
The 38 survivors, 37 citizens of Senegal and one from Guinea-Bissau, are currently being treated on the island of Sal, seven of them had to be treated in a hospital, according to Senegalese diplomacy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese Abroad has taken measures to repatriate them as soon as possible, he added.
On the 12th, the Royal Moroccan Navy rescued 134 Senegalese from the sea who were trying to migrate to Spain irregularly and whose boat had also left Fass Boye.
The Atlantic migration route from the West African coast to the Canary Islands, often used by African immigrants trying to reach Spain, is one of the deadliest in the world. And summer is its busiest period. "There is a great lack of safe and regular pathways for migration, which is what results in smugglers and traffickers putting people on these deadly journeys," IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli recalled.
Senegal is both a transit country and a country of origin for people trying to reach Europe irregularly. In 2020, the Atlantic route was reactivated with hundreds of young people who boarded the canoes again due to the closure of land borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic difficulties aggravated by this crisis.
At least 559 people died trying to reach the Canary Islands in 2022, while 126 people died or disappeared on the same route in the first six months of this year with 15 registered shipwrecks, according to the IOM. In late July, at least 15 people drowned when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
