Authorities recovered the bodies of seven people and rescued 38 others, including four children between the ages of 12 and 16, as of Wednesday night, Msehli said by telephone. She estimated that “roughly 63 people would have perished in this tragedy” given the number of people unaccounted for, since “people that are missing at sea are presumed dead.”
Msehli added that the IOM was seeking more information on the incident, noting that it was unclear whether those feared or confirmed dead had drowned or died of other causes in the weeks since their departure from Senegal.
One of the boat’s passengers was from Guinea-Bissau, while the others were all from Senegal, Agence France-Press reported, quoting Senegal’s Foreign Ministry.
Meanwhile, Senegal’s state-run news agency, APS, reported that the pirogue, a large wooden fishing boat, set off from the coastal town of Fass Boye, to the north of the Senegalese capital Dakar, in July.
While the boat’s intended destination has not been confirmed, many migrants leave the West African coast seeking to reach the Spanish Canary Islands. The president of the local fishermen’s association, Cheikh Awa Boye, said two of his nephews were missing and that “they wanted to go to Spain,” according to the Associated Press.
“We’ve seen a lot of cases where boats were stranded for days and weeks, and these tragedies have become a little bit more frequent in the past two years with the increased departures from West Africa,” Msehli said.
According to a report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the number of people attempting the long and dangerous route from the northwest coast of Africa to the Canary Islands increased sharply in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic hit many economies, having a “particularly harsh” impact on the region’s small-business owners, salaried workers and informal workers.
Migrants and refugees interviewed by the organization gave a range of reasons for making the dangerous journey by boat, including escaping conflict or forced labor, seeking better economic opportunities or being repeatedly refused access to legal migration channels.
Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish migration advocacy group, wrote in an emailed statement Thursday that it had alerted countries on the route between Senegal and the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the Moroccan coast, after learning about the boat’s departure.
“We are aware that search efforts have indeed been made, although we consider that they have not been sufficient,” Caminando Fronteras said. “The characteristics of this migratory route mean that these boats can easily get lost or drift away if there is an engine failure.”
It gave a higher estimated death toll, saying that relatives said 130 people were on board, and that it believed 92 people had died.
During the first six months of this year, at least 126 migrants died or disappeared while traveling on the northwest African route by boat to the Canary Islands, according to the IOM figures. The U.N. agency notes however that information on the number of departures from West Africa is very limited and shipwrecks often go unreported, so the true number could be higher.
More than 2,400 people have died or are missing after attempting to reach Europe by all routes so far this year, according to the agency’s data, while almost 128,000 people have reached the continent by sea.
