More than 60 people are feared dead after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean, as reported by the news agency Reuters. The boat, mostly carrying Senegalese migrants, left Senegal on July 10 with 101 passengers on board. According to Senegal's foreign ministry, 38 passengers were rescued. However, the time of the incident was not immediately clear.
According to the ministry, the survivors, one of whom was from Guinea-Bissau, were on the Cape Verde island of Sal, where Senegal was trying to get in touch with authorities for their repatriation. The Atlantic migration route from the coast of West Africa to the Canary Islands is one of the world's deadliest. Summer is its busiest period, as per Reuters.
"Safe and regular pathways to migration are sorely lacking, which is what gives room to smugglers and traffickers to put people on these deadly journeys," said International Organization for Migration spokeswoman Safa Msehli, as quoted by Reuters.
According to the IOM, in 2022, as many as 559 people died trying to reach the Canary Islands. At least 126 people died or went missing on the same route in the first six months of this year, and 15 shipwrecks were recorded.
Last month, at least 15 people drowned when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Senegal's capital, Dakar, Reuters reported.
In another incident, at least six Afghan men died when a migrant boat heading to Britain sank in the Channel last week on Saturday, French officials said, as a search continued to find those still missing, as reported by news agency AFP. The deputy public prosecutor for the French coastal city of Boulogne, Philippe Sabatier, told AFP that the rest of the passengers were “almost all Afghans with some Sudanese, mostly adults with some minors” and said 49 survivors were rescued.
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