After their boat capsizes 385 miles off the coast of Africa, at least 60 migrants are thought dead.After a ship sank yesterday near Cape Verde, dozens of people are presumed dead.
After 38 individuals on a boat that had departed Senegal in West Africa more than a month earlier with more than 100 aboard were saved by coast guards off Cape Verde, authorities reported that dozens of migrants destined for Spain are now believed to be dead.
Senegal’s foreign affairs ministry reported that the boat was retrieved on Tuesday by the Cape Verde coast guard, around 620 kilometers (385 miles) off the coast of West Africa, with 38 survivors and seven dead on board.
Authorities have not said how many migrants perished on the journey or what went wrong.
Even though the journey from West Africa to Spain is among the most hazardous in the world, the number of migrants sailing from Senegal on flimsy wooden boats has increased over the past 12 months.
A big fishing boat known as a pirogue carrying more than 100 migrants departed Senegal on July 10 according to the Spanish migration advocacy group Walking Borders.
They were all from Senegal, with the exception of one individual from Guinea-Bissau.
After 10 days without hearing from loved ones on the boat, families in Fass Boye, a seaside hamlet 90 miles north of the capital Dakar, contacted Walking Borders on July 20, according to the organization’s founder Helena Maleno Garzón.
The missing include two of Cheikh Awa Boye’s nephews, according to the president of the neighborhood fishermen’s association.
They desired to travel to Spain, Boye remarked.
On the ocean migration route to the Spanish Canary Islands, which serve as a gateway to the European Union, the Cape Verde archipelago is located about 350 miles off the coast.
Nearly everyone on the boat, according to Moda Samb, a local elected official from Fasse Boye, was a native of this fishing village.
‘He stated that his father was on the phone with one of the survivors, who informed him that the other survivors had perished.
He noted that some families were still awaiting word on whether their children were among the survivors.
Seven of the survivors, who arrived in Sal on Tuesday and needed hospitalization, were taken care of by the authorities in Cape Verde, who claimed they had mobilized the resources required.
The foreign ministry of Senegal stated that efforts would be made to repatriate its residents as quickly as feasible.
Similar disasters have already affected Senegal on multiple occasions in recent years.
Thousands of Africans fleeing violence and poverty travel through Cape Verde on one of the sea routes that lead to Europe.
Many of them travel on pirogue boats, which are susceptible to the whims of the weather, in their attempt to reach the Spanish Canary Islands, one of the riskiest routes.
In January of this year, rescue efforts were required to save over 90 migrants from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone in the waters off Cape Verde.
189 people were saved by the Moroccan navy on August 7 after a boat carrying Senegalese migrants sank off the coast of Western Sahara.
Five bodies of the migrants were also found.
According to Walking Borders, about 1,000 migrants lost their lives in the first half of 2023 trying to reach Spain by water.
Youth unemployment, political turmoil, and the effects of climate change all encourage migrants to take risks with their life aboard crowded boats.
World News