63 people dead after migrant boat capsized near Cape Verde

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
16 Aug 2023 22:17

A couple of hundred kilometers away from Cape Verde, a Senegalese migrant boat capsized leaving 63 dead and 38 survivors.

Children play on fishing boats known as “pirogues” in Dakar, Senegal, Saturday, June 24, 2023. (AP)

International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on Wednesday that over 60 migrants are believed dead after a boat carrying migrants from Senegal capsized off West Africa's Cape Verde islands.

IOM Spokesperson Safa Msehli said 63 people are believed to have lost their lives while 38 people were rescued, including four children aged 12 to 16.

On Monday, the pirogue, the long wooden fishing boat, was clocked, according to the police in the Atlantic Ocean, about 150 nautical miles from the Cape Verdean island of Sal.

A Spanish fishing boat initially spotted the pirogue in the Cape Verde archipelago, which is located about 600 kilometers from the maritime migration route leading to the Spanish Canary Islands, a gateway to EU territory. The Spanish boat alerted the Cape Verdean authorities, and, according to Msehli, the emergency services were able to recover the remains of seven people, other than the survivors, while the rest, 56 people, remained missing.

The IOM Spokesperson painfully revealed that "generally when people are reported missing following a shipwreck, they are presumed dead."

According to the Senegalese Foreign Ministry, based on information retrieved from survivors, the boat initially left the Senegalese fishing village of Fasse Boye on July 10 carrying 101 people on board.

A mediterranean shipwreck leaves 41 migrants missing

Earlier in August, a tragic shipwreck in the Mediterranean left 41 migrants, including three children, missing and feared dead, as reported by UN agencies. The incident occurred after their metal boat capsized due to bad weather, having departed from Tunisia's Sfax port.

Four survivors, consisting of a lone 13-year-old boy, a woman, and two men, were rescued after days of drifting at sea and were brought to Italy's Lampedusa island by the Italian coastguard.

The survivors, originally from Ivory Coast and Guinea, were found to be in relatively good health and were unrelated to the missing migrants. This shipwreck is part of a series of deadly incidents recently reported. Officials later confirmed 16 migrants were dead in shipwrecks near Tunisia and Western Sahara. Additionally, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicated that at least 30 individuals were missing following two shipwrecks near Lampedusa on Sunday.

Lampedusa, situated about 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Tunisia, often serves as the first destination for migrants journeying from North Africa to Europe. Sadly, many do not survive this perilous route, rendering the Central Mediterranean migrant crossing one of the world's most deadly. In 2023, over 1,800 individuals have lost their lives attempting this route, a figure more than double the fatalities recorded during the same period in the previous year.

The four survivors informed the Red Cross that they managed to survive by clinging to inner tubes. A statement from the EU's border patrol agency, Frontex, indicated that there might be additional survivors from their boat.