Eight dead after boat capsizes off Senegal

Local media reported that the boat was carrying migrants and said the death toll could be much higher, as such long wooden fishing boats were often packed with people

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Photo: AFP

By AFP

Published: Thu 13 Jul 2023, 9:59 PM

Eight people died when a wooden boat capsized off the coast of northern Senegal, the interior minister said Thursday, along a route sometimes used by migrants to reach Spain's Canary Islands.

Local media reported that the boat was carrying migrants and said the death toll could be much higher, as such long wooden fishing boats were often packed with people.

Speaking from Saint-Louis in northern Senegal, where he visited the injured in hospital, Interior Minister Antoine Felix Diome declined to say how many people had been on board the boat or if any were missing.

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"There are eight lifeless bodies and four injured," he said.

According to a local official, the boat had departed from southern Senegal and the accident occurred early on Wednesday.

The news follows reports by the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras that three other boats that had left from Senegal are missing.

It said they were carrying more than 300 migrants.

One of them left on June 27 from Kafountine, a small coastal town in the south of Senegal around 1,700 kilometres off the Canary Islands, with around 200 people on board, the NGO said.

The other two boats, with around 120 people on board, left Mbour on the Senegalese coast on June 23, it added.

Dakar has said separately that at least 260 Senegalese had been "rescued" in Moroccan territorial waters between June 28 and July 9.

On Thursday, Diome said 276 people were in Morocco and "doing well".

Caminando Fronteras said those people had also left Senegal but had not been on the boats carrying the 300 missing people.

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AFP

Published: Thu 13 Jul 2023, 9:59 PM

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