At least 34 dead after migrant boat sinks off Senegal

At least 34 people died when a small boat carrying migrants went down off northwestern Senegal, authorities said Sunday. The death toll climbed through the day: the interior ministry first reported 21 bodies recovered along with a single survivor, calling those numbers provisional while the search continued. Later, the Senegalese Press Agency put the toll at 34 or more, a figure the migrant aid group Action for Human Rights and Friendship confirmed to AFP. An indeterminate number of people remain missing, APS said.

Media reports said the flat-bottomed pirogue capsized Saturday off the Loumpoul dunes in Kebemer department, on the stretch between Dakar and the northern city of Saint-Louis. Saliou Diouf, founder of Boza Fii, Senegal's main migrant aid association, told AFP that the sinking actually happened Friday. He said the nationalities of all the victims had not been confirmed while the search was ongoing, but that the bodies recovered Saturday were Senegalese.

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said Sunday that all state authorities and resources had been mobilised to locate the missing, care for survivors and support families. He also promised to keep targeting the people who organise the crossings. No one should set out with the sea as their only horizon, he wrote, vowing to keep up the fight against smuggling networks while giving young Senegalese reasons to hope at home.

The disaster lands on a route where thousands have died in recent years trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands from West Africa. Senegal's authorities said they intercepted 142 migrants Friday on another small boat bound for Spain, among them 23 women, two babies and two children, with nationalities spanning Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Nigeria.

Pressure is building on the other end of the journey too. Authorities on the Spanish island of El Hierro declared an emergency Saturday after a surge in arrivals, saying more than 3,300 people reached the island aboard roughly 30 boats since the start of November. Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco have stepped up maritime patrols around departure points, pushing smugglers to launch further south from Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea, which stretches out an already deadly crossing.

Senegal's interior ministry said Sunday it was determined to fight people-smuggling networks, pointing to strengthened cooperation with neighbouring countries. It added that the interior minister would travel to the region where the boat went down to meet victims' families and offer the state's condolences.