26 migrants dead in a recent shipwreck, the Prime Minister denounces a migratory “hemorrhage”

Relatives of the missing, speaking this week to an AFP correspondent, traced the departure to the last days of April and the tragedy to the first days of May.

Guinea is in shock after the death of 26 migrants who left the West African country. They perished off the coast of Senegal when their boat sank a few days ago, reported Friday, May 10, Guinean Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah, who spoke of‘”hemorrhage” migratory. Most left from Matam, one of the communes making up the city of Conakry, he said.

The sinking was reported in recent days on social networks, but the authorities had not specified the toll. Relatives of the missing, speaking this week to an AFP correspondent, traced the departure to the last days of April and the tragedy to the first days of May.

The Prime Minister spoke of the thousands of young Guineans who are waiting in different countries to be repatriated after trying to leave. “Today we have nearly 3,000 of our young people waiting to be repatriated to Niger, 1,200 to Algeria, 400 to the Arab Republic of Egypt, thousands who are in the camps in Italy, not counting those in the United States of which I do not have the number. It is a hemorrhage for our country. he said, referring to the multiple routes taken by migrants.

Those of Matam seemed to have chosen the Atlantic route passing west of the African coast and leading to Europe.

More than 6,600 migrants died or disappeared trying to reach Spain

A multitude of Africans fleeing poverty, unemployment or the absence of future prospects take this perilous route by embarking clandestinely in exchange for money on canoes or precarious boats which can transport dozens of passengers. Their main destination is the Spanish Canary Islands, the gateway to Europe.

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 report from the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.

The causes of the sinking are unknown. But the Prime Minister disagreed with claims that the migrants had been victims of criminal violence following a quarrel with the crew, and not a shipwreck. He attributed these assertions to individuals who would seek to provoke a “blast” social security in Guinea, and estimated that they could have “compromising relations between the two brotherly countries of Senegal and Guinea”.