Mauritanian authorities pulled 70 bodies from the water on Wednesday and Thursday after a migrant boat went down off the coast of Mauritania. The boat had gone under early on Wednesday.
The Gambian foreign affairs ministry, which announced the figures on Friday, said at least 70 people had been killed. Another 30 were feared dead. The vessel was believed to have left Gambia and carried mostly Gambian and Senegalese nationals.
It held an estimated 150 passengers. Only 16 were rescued. Witness accounts suggested that more than 100 people may have died, the ministry said in its statement.
It is one of the deadliest accidents in recent years on a popular route to Europe. The Atlantic passage from the West African coast to the Canary Islands, used mainly by Africans trying to reach Spain, ranks among the most dangerous crossings anywhere. More than 46,000 irregular migrants made it to the Canaries last year, a record, according to the European Union. The rights group Caminando Fronteras counted more than 10,000 deaths on the journey, a 58pc increase over 2023.
The Gambian ministry urged its citizens to “refrain from embarking on such perilous journeys, which continue to claim the lives of many.”
Another grim weekend in the Aegean
Farther north, the Greek Coastguard found two would-be migrants dead on Saturday morning on Mavros Kavos beach on the island of Rhodes, an adult man and a girl. Officers also found three new arrivals alive there.
The local site Rodiaki reported that the two had been aboard a smuggler’s inflatable boat, which left its passengers a short way offshore and headed back out to sea. They had set off from the Turkish coast with ten others, who made it to the beach. Greek police separately located 38 migrants in the nearby Gennadi area of Rhodes.
All 41 survivors were being moved to the island’s port authority, and the bodies went to Rhodes General Hospital. Greece, close to North Africa and the Middle East, has long sat on routes used by people fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty. Its government has declared a three-month suspension of asylum requests from anyone arriving by sea from North Africa.
