At least 69 people have died and many more are missing after a boat capsized off the coast of Mauritania, coastguards in the north-west African country have said.
\nSeventeen people have been rescued and a search is continuing for other passengers who were aboard the dugout canoe that was heading towards Spain’s Canary Islands.<\/p>\n
According to survivors, the boat left The Gambia six days before Tuesday’s accident, carrying around 160 people on board, mainly
\nGambian and Senegalese nationals.<\/p>\n
The perilous journey over the Atlantic Ocean has become an increasingly common route for African migrants trying to reach Europe.<\/p>\n
Nearly 47,000 people reached the Canary Islands last year and the Spanish non-government organisation Caminando Fronteras estimates more than 9,000 migrants died trying.<\/p>\n
Coastguard sources told Spanish news agency EFE that search efforts were ongoing off the coast around 60km (37 miles) north of the capital, Nouakchott – and rescue teams were preparing to dive and inspect the sunken vessel.<\/p>\n
The migrants spotted the lights of a coastal town late on Tuesday night and “moved to one side, causing it to capsize”, a senior coastguard official told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
Caminando Fronteras spokesperson Helen Maleno urged the coastguard to keep up the search, describing the accident to Spanish media as one of the most significant “tragedies of this summer”.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the Mauritanian security forces were accused of systematically abusing migrants from other African countries.<\/p>\n
The Human Rights Watch report alleged the violations had been exacerbated by a deal with the European Union and Spain, which aims to curb the dangerous sea crossings to the Canary Islands.<\/p>\n
Source: BBC News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At least 69 people have died and many more are missing after a boat capsized off the coast of Mauritania, coastguards in the north-west African country have said. Seventeen people have been rescued and a search is continuing for other passengers who were aboard the dugout canoe that was heading towards Spain’s Canary Islands. According…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":88221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88222,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88220\/revisions\/88222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mustaqbalmedia.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}