More Than 60 Migrants Feared Dead In Capsized Boat off Cape Verde Coast

More than 60 people are feared dead after a boat carrying migrants was found off Cape Verde in West Africa.

The wooden pirogue style boat was seen almost 320 kilometers off Sal, a part of Cape Verde, by a Spanish fishing boat, which then alerted authorities.

Thirty-eight people, including children, were rescued, with footage showing them being helped ashore, some on stretchers, on the island of Sal.

The boat left the Senegalese fishing village of Fasse Boye on 10 July with 101 people on board, according to the Senegal’s foreign ministry.

Exact figures of migrants through the route are hard to come by, but between 2020 and 2023 at least 67,000 people arrived in the Canary Islands.

Over that same period, just over 2,500 lost their lives.

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The Atlantic migration route from the coast of West Africa to the Canary Islands, typically used by African migrants trying to reach Spain, is one of the world’s deadliest. Summer is its busiest period.

“Safe and regular pathways to migration are sorely lacking, which is what gives room to smugglers and traffickers to put people on these deadly journeys,” said IOM spokeswoman Safa Msehli.

IOM is collecting information and did not yet have details about the latest incident, she added.

At least 559 people died attempting to reach the Canary Islands in 2022, while 126 people died or went missing on the same route in the first six months of this year with 15 shipwrecks recorded, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

At least 15 people drowned when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Senegal’s capital Dakar in late July.