At least 70 people have died and 30 more are feared lost after a migrant boat capsized off the coast of West Africa.
The tragedy is one of the deadliest incidents on the perilous route to Europe in recent years.
The vessel, believed to have set sail from Gambia with mostly Gambian and Senegalese nationals aboard, sank off Mauritania early on Wednesday, according to a statement from Gambia’s foreign affairs ministry released late on Friday.
It was carrying an estimated 150 passengers, 16 of whom had been rescued.
Mauritanian authorities recovered 70 bodies on Wednesday and Thursday, and witness accounts suggest over 100 may have died, the statement said.
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.
More than 46,000 irregular migrants reached the Canary Islands last year, a record, according to the European Union.
More than 10,000 died attempting the journey, a 58 per cent increase over 2023, according to the rights group Caminando Fronteras.
Gambia’s foreign affairs ministry implored its nationals to “refrain from embarking on such perilous journeys, which continue to claim the lives of many”.
Earlier this month, more than 30 boats carrying about 600 irregular migrants arrived in Spain’s Balearic islands within a matter of days. The spike came as a new migratory route from North Africa gained traction after a crackdown by authorities in other jumping off points.
Overall, irregular migration to Spain had fallen, but it has risen by 170 per cent in the Balearics in the first six months of the year to around 3,000 people, official data shows.
The number of boats, mostly departing from Algeria, more than doubled.
Konestory, a 20-year-old South Sudanese migrant, told Reuters on Tuesday in the Mallorcan capital of Palma that he had fled from growing instability in the region.
He paid $2,000 to board a boat from Algeria, which took 46 hours to reach the islands. They faced “a lot of waves”, ran out of food and water, and got lost, he said.
“Now I’m happy. I’m looking at ways to talk to my mom to give her the information that I reached here,” he said.
Authorities in the Balearic islands off eastern Spain – Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera – say they feel abandoned.
They fear they could become a new migrant gateway, like the Canary Islands, which received 47,000 from West Africa at the peak of that route’s popularity in 2024.
Arrivals in the Canaries fell by 46 per cent in January-July of this year, largely thanks to tightened controls by Mauritania.
