Sixty-three migrants are presumed dead in the sinking of a canoe that left the Senegalese coast in early July and was found off Cape Verde on Monday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday.
38 people were rescued, including four young people between the ages of 12 and 16, said IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli. The makeshift boat was spotted Monday in the Atlantic about 277 km from the Cape Verdean island of Sal, by a Spanish fishing vessel which alerted Cape Verdean authorities, police in the archipelago said. , about six hundred kilometers from the Senegalese coast. Apart from the 38 survivors, the rescuers found the remains of seven people, reported the spokesperson.
101 passengers on board
According to the testimonies of the survivors quoted by the Senegalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other sources, the boat had left the locality of Fass Boye (west), on the Senegalese coast, on July 10 with 101 passengers on board, all Senegalese. with the exception of a Bissau-Guinean.
Thus 56 people are missing. “Generally, when people are reported missing following a shipwreck, they are presumed dead,” said the spokesperson. The authorities have so far refrained from commenting on what happened after the departure of the canoe on July 10. But “the missing are all dead”, corroborated with AFP Abdou Karim Sarr, an official of the Local Artisanal Fishing Councils (CLPA), a professional organization.
It is “sadness, consternation, despair and total calm”, a local elected representative from Fass Boye, Moda Samb, told AFP. According to Moda Samb, 98% of the occupants of the canoe are from Fass Boye: “They were born and grew up” in this locality of fishermen.
“One of the survivors who had his father on the phone told him that the others (missing) are dead,” he said. “Others (families) are waiting to find out if their children are among the survivors,” he said.