DAKAR: Senegal’s military said Saturday that it had seized a boat carrying more than 200 migrants trying to reach Europe, following nearly 90 died when attempting the dangerous Atlantic crossing earlier this month.
The boat has been intercepted by the patrol boat in fishing waters near Lompoul in northwest Senegal, a military statement said. It added that the boat was carrying 202 people, including women.
In early July, a boat carrying about 170 people who set off from Senegal capsized off the coast of Mauritania, killing about 90 people. The disaster prompted President Ousmane Sonko to ask people not to risk the Atlantic Ocean’s currents in overcrowded ship that often are not seaworthy.
But the route is increasingly used as officials step up surveillance in the Mediterranean. “I once again make a request to the young: your solution is not to be found in ships,” President Sonko told a crowd of youths in Saint-Louis. The President said that the future of the world is in Africa the only continent that still has the scope for the growth and development.
According to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, over 5,000 people died attempting to reach Spain by sea in the first five months of the current year, representing the highest daily average toll since it started keeping records in 2007.
