Scores drown in rough sea
Survivors of capsized boat receiving medical care after Atlantic Ocean disaster
SCORES OF migrants who swam through rough Atlantic Ocean waters to safety from a capsized boat while 58 others drowned were receiving care yesterday in Mauritania after one of the deadliest disasters this year among people making the perilous journey to Europe.
The boat that left Gambia a week ago had been carrying at least 150 people, including women and children.
It had been headed toward Spain’s Canary Islands when it tried to approach the Mauritanian coast to get fuel and food, said Laura Lungarotti, chief of mission in the West African nation with the UN migration agency.
“Many drowned. The ones who survived swam up to the Mauritanian coast close to the city of Nouadhibou,” she said.
“The Mauritanian authorities are very efficiently co-ordinating the response with the agencies currently present in the northern city.”
At least 83 people swam to shore, while Mauritanian authorities said security forces had found 85 survivors.
Interior Minister Mohamed Salem Merzoug said 10 people had been taken to the hospital in Nouadhibou for “urgent” treatment.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone remained missing.
The survivors were receiving care in accordance with “human solidarity, fraternity and African hospitality”, the minister’s statement said.
It said the boat had held as many as 180 people, most of them aged 20 to 30.
Mauritania will open an investigation into those responsible for “this drama” including possible trafficking networks, the statement said.
While thousands once died off Mauritania’s coast in attempts to reach the Canary Islands between 2005 and 2010, that later calmed, the statement said.
But in recent months the authorities had detained boats mostly carrying hundreds of migrants from Senegal, which neighbours Gambia, it said.
Survivors said the boat that capsized had left Gambia on Wednesday last week.
There was no immediate statement from the authorities in Gambia, where tens of thousands of people have left in hopes of reaching Europe in recent years.
Despite the country’s small size, more than 35 000 Gambians arrived in Europe between 2014 and 2018, according to the UN migration agency.
A 22-year oppressive rule by former president Yahya Jammeh severely affected the country’s economy, especially for youth, and contributed greatly to the exodus.
Since Jammeh fled into exile in 2017 after a surprise election loss, European countries have been pushing to return asylum seekers.
But Gambia’s economy still suffers. The coastal nation was shaken earlier this year by the collapse of the oldest British travel company, Thomas Cook.
At the time, Gambia’s tourism minister said the government had convened an emergency meeting on the collapse, while some Gambians said the shutdown could have a devastating impact on tourism, which contributes more than 30% of the country’s GDP.
The perilous sea passage from West Africa to the Canary Islands was once a major route for migrants seeking jobs and a better life in Europe.
The latest incident was one of the deadliest since attempts became scarcer when Spain stepped up patrols in the mid-2000s.
At the peak of the route’s popularity in the mid-2000s, tens of thousands of migrants reached the Canary Islands or died trying.
Last year, the Guinea-Bissau coast guard reported that 60 migrants had probably drowned when their ship sank off the coast, but their bodies were never recovered. |