In a post on X, the navy said on Tuesday that it had recovered “17 lifeless bodies” after nine people were initially announced dead following Sunday’s shipwreck off the western town of Mbour.
The search is ongoing, the navy said. Many of the vessel’s passengers remain missing.
The boat – a narrow, wooden fishing vessel known as a pirogue – was carrying more than 100 people from the town, and it capsized after sailing only 4km (2.5 miles), state broadcaster Radio Television Senegalaise said late on Sunday.
Witnesses in Mbour were quoted as saying that dozens of people had boarded the boat, the AFP news agency reported.
A spokesperson for the armed forces told the Reuters news agency on Monday that the navy had sent a plane and two boats to search for the dead and survivors.
Senegal’s coasts are one of the main departure points for thousands of refugees and migrants heading to Europe.
The Atlantic route is particularly perilous due to the strong currents. Thousands of deaths and disappearances occur every year on overloaded, often unseaworthy boats.
The route from Africa to the Canary Islands has seen a 154 percent surge in people making the journey this year with 21,620 crossings to the archipelago in the first seven months of 2024, according to data from the European Union’s border agency.
Spanish authorities said as many as 150,000 more people from Africa may be set to make the crossing this year.
Years of conflict in the Sahel region, unemployment and the impact of climate change on farming communities are among the reasons why people attempt the crossing.
Family members, friends and community members gather along the beach as they wait for search and rescue teams
Family members, friends and community members gather along the beach as they wait for search and rescue teams to find survivors and retrieve the dead after a pirogue carrying over a hundred migrants sunk off the coast of Senegal
Seven people have been rescued and 21 others remain missing at sea after the boat they were travelling in capsized off the island of Lampedusa, the Italian coast guard has said.
The survivors, all Syrian nationals, were picked up from a semi-sunken boat about 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometres) southwest of Lampedusa, a statement said on Wednesday (Sept 4,2024).
Chiara Cardoletti, head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Italy, wrote on X that the survivors were in “critical” condition and had lost relatives at sea.
The survivors told rescuers they had set off on Sunday from Libya, and that 21 of the 28 people they had aboard, including three children, had fallen into the sea during rough weather.
The boat “capsized repeatedly, leaving people clinging to the side of the boat as their family members drowned around them,” Nicola Dell’Arciprete, country coordinator for Italy for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said in a statement.
The Italian office of the UN refugee agency told the Reuters news agency that Sudanese people were also on the boat, which is believed to have departed from the port of Sabratha, west of Tripoli.
At least 12 people have died and dozens have been rescued after the boat they were travelling in capsized during an attempted crossing of the English Channel, authorities say.
Rescuers pulled a total of 65 people from the English Channel on Tuesday in a search that lasted more than four hours, according to Etienne Baggio, a spokesman for the French agency that oversees the stretch of sea where the boat ripped apart. Doctors confirmed 12 died, he said.
Another 12 people were admitted to hospital, and two were in very serious conditions, authorities said on Monday (Sept 3rd).
“Unfortunately, the bottom of the boat ripped open,” said Olivier Barbarin, mayor of Le Portel near Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Baggio described it as the deadliest migrant boat tragedy in the English Channel this year. Many of those on board didn’t have life vests, he said. It was not immediately clear how the boat ripped open or what kind of boat it was. Some attempt the crossing in rubber dinghies.
The maritime prefecture said the boat got into difficulty off Gris-Nez point between Boulogne-sur-Mer and the port of Calais farther north.
Sea temperatures off northern France were about 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit).
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin went to Boulogne-sur-Mer to meet those involved in handling what he described as the “terrible shipwreck”.
He said the boat was frail and small – less than 7 metres (23 feet) long – and that smugglers are packing more and more people aboard such vessels. Most of the people on the boat were believed to be from Eritrea, and most of the victims were women, he said.
Last week, the leaders of France and the United Kingdom agreed to deepen cooperation on irregular migration in the channel.
“We absolutely must – and this is a very important point – re-establish special relations with our British friends,” Darmanin said on Tuesday
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called the deaths “horrifying and deeply tragic”.
In a statement, Cooper criticised the “gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives”, adding they “do not care about anything but the profits they make”.
At least 30 refugees and migrants have died or gone missing while trying to cross to the UK this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Some 2,109 people have tried to cross the English Channel on small boats in the past seven days, according to UK Home Office data updated on Tuesday.
The data includes people found in the channel or on arrival.