Sixty-three people
are thought to have died, while the 38 survivors included four children aged 12
to 16, IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli told AFP.
The long wooden fishing
vessel, known as a pirogue, was spotted Monday in the Atlantic Ocean about 150
nautical miles (277 kilometres) from the Cape Verdean island of Sal, police
said.
The Spanish fishing
vessel that saw it alerted Cape Verdean authorities.
The Cape Verde archipelago
lies about 600 kilometres (350 miles) off the coast on the maritime migration
route to the Spanish Canary Islands — a gateway to the European Union.
Emergency services
recovered the remains of seven people, Msehli told AFP, while another 56 people
are believed to be missing.
“Generally, when
people are reported missing following a shipwreck, they are presumed
dead,” she said.
The boat left the
Senegalese fishing village of Fasse Boye on July 10 with 101 people on board,
Senegal’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday, citing survivors.
Apart from one person
from Guinea-Bissau, they were all Senegalese.
The authorities have
not, for the moment, said what happened to the boat once it set off.
But Abdou Karim Sarr,
an officer with the local fisherman’s association the CLPA, told AFP:
“Those missing are all dead.”
–
Dangerous route –
Moda Samb, a local
elected official from Fasse Boye, said nearly all those on the boat had grown
up in this fishing community.
“One of the
survivors who had his father on the telephone told him that the others were
dead,” he said. Other families were still waiting to hear if their children
were among the survivors, he added.
The authorities in
Cape Verde said they had mobilised the necessary resources to care for the
survivors, seven of whom had to be hospitalised after reaching Sal on Tuesday.
Senegal’s foreign
ministry said it would be working to repatriate its citizens as soon as
possible.
Senegal has already
dealt with several similar tragedies in recent years.
Cape Verde lies on
one of the maritime migration routes used by thousands of Africans fleeing
poverty and war towards Europe.
Many of them aim to
reach the Spanish Canary Islands, one of the most dangerous routes, often
travelling in the pirogue boats which are vulnerable to the vagaries of the
weather.
Around 90 migrants
from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone had to be rescued in the
seas off Cape Verde in January this year.
Source link : https://www.ecr.co.za/news/news/over-60-dead-migrant-boat-sinking-cape-verde-un-agency/
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Publish date : 2023-08-17 03:00:00
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