At least 89 migrants die in shipwreck off Mauritania

Nearly 90 migrants died on Monday when their boat sank off the coast of Mauritania on the route to Europe, the Mauritanian news agency and a senior Mauritanian official told AFP on Thursday, July 4. “The Mauritanian coastguard found the bodies of 89 people aboard a large traditional fishing boat that capsized on Monday, July 1, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.” four kilometers from the town of Ndiago in the southwest of the country, the Mauritanian News Agency reported. The coast guard rescued nine people, including a five-year-old girl.

The agency cited survivors’ accounts that the boat had left the Senegal-Gambia border with 170 passengers on board, bringing the number of missing to 72. The senior local government official provided similar information to AFP on condition of anonymity.

This is the latest tragedy on the Atlantic migratory route, with the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago and gateway to Europe, as its first destination. It takes several days of sailing to cover several hundred kilometres to the Spanish archipelago in conditions described as terrible by survivors, at the mercy of hunger and thirst, the sun, the elements and damage.