A new tragedy of illegal emigration to Europe has left at least 24 dead at sea in northern Senegal, according to an updated report communicated to AFP on Thursday by the governor of the Saint-Louis region.
Alioune Badara Samb, contacted by telephone, indicated that 24 bodies had been recovered since Wednesday after the sinking of their boat.
In addition, 21 people were rescued, he said.
He did not comment on the number of missing.
Testimonies reported the presence of 200, even more than 300 people in the boat, but the governor urged caution in the face of these figures.
The boat found itself in distress a few hundred meters from the shore, in a muddy area.
A number of occupants who survived were scattered among the crowds on the shore, complicating any accounting, he said.
The coastline can be particularly dangerous due to marine flows and the nature of the bottom.
A monitoring system has been set up on the coast, said the governor.
Mamady Dianfo, originally from Casamance (in the south, at the other end of the country), spoke on Wednesday evening of more than 300 occupants when the boat left the Senegalese coast a week ago.
Another survivor, Alpha Baldé, spoke of more than 200 occupants.
Mamady Dianfo said that the boat had arrived in Morocco.
There,
“the captain told us that he was lost and could no longer continue the journey.
We asked him to take us back to
Senegal ,
”
he said.
The tragedy occurred at the mouth of Saint-Louis, notoriously dangerous, he said.
Departure stream
According to the governor, the boat could have left from Joal-Fadiouth, a few hundred kilometers further south.
For years, Senegal has been facing a flood of departures heading to the Canaries, a Spanish archipelago and gateway to Europe, via the particularly deadly Atlantic maritime route, off the West African coast.
Thousands of Senegalese fleeing poverty, unemployment or the lack of future prospects according to them have embarked clandestinely in exchange for a certain sum of money on wooden canoes which can reach around twenty meters and carry dozens of passengers .
They pay a few hundred thousand CFA francs (1,000 FCFA = 1.5 EUR) to a smuggler and defy the dangers of a crossing of around 1,500 kilometers to reach the Canaries after seven or ten days of navigation.
At the end of 2023, hardly a day went by without reports in Senegal of an arrival in the Canaries, an interception, or a shipwreck.
According to Frontex, the agency controlling European borders, migrants from Senegal are, along with those from Morocco, the most numerous to arrive in the Canaries.
The number of migrants who landed in the Canaries in 2023 has tripled in one year to reach a record figure of 39,910, according to the Spanish government.
Of the more than 6,600 migrants who died or disappeared while trying to reach Spain in 2023, the vast majority died on the Atlantic route, says a recent report from the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.
President Macky Sall ordered emergency measures in November to stem this growing flow.