The bodies of 24 people have been recovered after a shipwreck off the northern Senegalese coast. Witnesses said the wrecked boat had been carrying hundreds of people.
The governor of the Saint Louis region, Alioune Badara Samb, said the bodies of 24 people had been recovered since Wednesday (Febuary 28) from a boat accident off the northern Senegalese coast.
The group of migrants had apparently been on their way to Spain's Canary Islands when the overcrowded vessel got into difficulty in dangerous waters and sank, the news agency AFP reported.
The Saint Louis river delta, where the Senegal River flows into the Atlantic Ocean, is notorious for its strong currents and areas of thick mud.
While Governor Samb did not say how many people were missing from the vessel, witnesses reportedly said more than 300 people could have been on board.
Samb said that a number of survivors managed to reach the shore and disappeared among locals, making it difficult to determine how many people the boat was initially carrying.
Read more: Morocco intercepts over 140 migrants headed for Canary Islands
Varying passenger estimates
According to one survivor, Mamady Dianfo from Casamance, the area of Senegal south of Gambia, there were more than 300 people on board when the boat left Senegal a week ago, AFP reported.
Another survivor, Alpha Balde, estimated there were more than 200 passengers.
Dianfo reportedly said the vessel reached Morocco, located more than 1,500 kilometers up the coast. However, the captain then said he was lost and could no longer continue the journey, according to AFP. "We asked him to take us back to Senegal," Dianfo said.
Senegal's coast is an increasingly common departure point for Africans fleeing political instability, poverty and economic hardship and heading to Spain's Canary Islands, from where many hope to reach mainland Spain and other EU countries.
According to Frontex, the border agency of the European Union, Senegal and Morocco are the two most common countries of origin for migrants arriving on the Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic, AFP reported.
The UN migration agency IOM recorded 537 deaths and disappearances on the Atlantic route last year, although the real number is believed to be much higher.
Between January 1 and February 25 this year, nearly 12,000 irregular migrant arrivals have been registered on the archipelago. Last year, the island group saw a record-breaking number of arrivals of almost 40,000, a significant increase over 2022.
Read more: A tale of death and survival on the Atlantic Ocean
with AFP