Over 50 clandestine migrants feared dead

More than 50 Africans clandestinely trying to reach Europe drowned off the coast of West Africa in two separate accidents at the weekend, witnesses said. The migrants were travelling in wooden canoes toward Spain’s Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, when the vessels capsized. Most of the would-be migrants were Senegalese, Malian, Bissau-Guinean and Gambian. On Sunday a Mauritanian fisherman rescued 28 people found hanging on to their capsized canoe some 100 kilometres from the northern coastal city of Nouadhibou, Mauritania’s economic capital. The survivors said 62 people had been on board. On Friday Moroccan authorities had plucked to safety 20 clandestine migrants who survived after their boat carrying 43 sank. Even as authorities were recovering bodies on a beach near Nouadhibou, another boat reportedly carrying illegal migrants signaled problems in the same waters on Tuesday, according to a local authority in Mauritania who declined to be named. Migration via northern Mauritania is a growing phenomenon with a new trans-Saharan route from the capital Nouakchott to Nouadhibou. The local authority said at least 200 illegal migrants arrive in the economic capital every week - most of them in an effort to get to the Canary Islands. “They disguise themselves as fisherman, with fisherman’s capes and life jackets. But we know that a fishing boat takes off with between six and 10 people. When there are 20 or 30 or even 50, clearly we are dealing with clandestine migrants.” He added, “Nearly every day there are bodies recovered from the waters either on the high seas by large fishing boats or by canoes near the coast.” Willing to risk everything to escape crushing poverty, every year thousands of West Africans brave hazardous conditions on land and at sea to reach Europe, but hundreds die in the attempt. In October 2005 the problem of illegal migration out of Africa made international headlines when several young men were killed and injured trying clear a wall separating Moroccan territory and the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.