DAKAR, Senegal — More bodies were recovered off Kébémer on Sunday, and Senegal’s official news agency APS put the death toll from the sunken migrant boat at 34.
The ministry’s own first count, posted on X, stood at 21 bodies by Saturday evening, with one survivor. It called the toll provisional. The statement gave no number for how many people had been on board, and the search for survivors continued.
It was a pirogue, a traditional wooden fishing boat, and the people aboard were trying to migrate irregularly, the ministry said. Media reports said it capsized on Saturday off the Loumpoul dunes in Kébémer department, between Dakar and the northern city of Saint-Louis, and the newspaper Le Soleil reported that most of the victims came from the Leona and Thieppe districts in the same department.
Minister to Visit Kébémer on Monday
APS said the governor of the Louga region, Ndèye Ngénar Mbodj, was visiting the sites concerned on Sunday as part of operations to identify and preserve the bodies. Interior Minister Mouhamadou Makhtar Cissé is expected at the scene on Monday, APS said.
In its statement, the ministry expressed “deep emotion and profound sadness” over the sinking. The ministry offered condolences to the victims’ families on behalf of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and the government. State services, it said, had been mobilised to keep searching, help any possible survivors and support the families.
Fighting people-smuggling networks remained a stated priority, with stronger cooperation with neighbouring countries named in the statement. The statement also urged vigilance about the dangers of irregular migration.
A Route That Keeps Claiming Lives
Senegalese authorities also said they had intercepted 142 migrants on a similar small boat heading for Spain. Police said the group included 23 women, two babies and two other children, from Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Nigeria.
Thousands of people have died in recent years attempting to reach Spain’s Canary Islands from West Africa, including 635 in the first five months of this year, according to the migrant rights group Walking Borders, Reuters reported.
The International Organization for Migration has said tighter controls at traditional departure points in Senegal, Morocco and Mauritania have pushed some migrants further south, to countries such as The Gambia. Those alternative departure points can add up to 750 kilometres to the crossing, the IOM has warned, extending some journeys to about 2,200 kilometres and exposing people to longer periods at sea and greater risks of shipwreck, dehydration and disappearance.
Boats attempting the crossing have capsized before, including in a disaster off Mauritania and off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
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