Over 60 Senegalese migrants feared dead at sea after boat rescued off of Cape Verde coast

More than 60 Senegalese migrants are feared dead after a Spanish fishing vessel rescued a boat off the coast of Cape Verde.

Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service confirmed a Spanish boat named the Zillarri rescued 38 people, including four children, and recovered seven bodies from a Senegalese vessel on Monday after spotting it adrift.

On Thursday, authorities said the rescued boat originally had more than 100 people aboard.

Spanish migration advocacy group Walking Borders said the vessel that got into trouble was a large fishing boat, called a pirogue, which had left Senegal on July 10.

Families in Fass Boye, a seaside town 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, reached out to Walking Borders on July 20 after 10 days without hearing from loved ones on the boat.

Cheikh Awa Boye, president of the local fishing association, said survivors called home from Cape Verde after the rescue, adding that two of his nephews are among those missing.

An official of the tropical tuna fishing company PEVASA, which operates the Zillarri, said the survivors were asking for help and were in a "bad state."

The route from West Africa to Spain is one of the world’s most dangerous, yet the number of migrants leaving from Senegal on rickety wooden boats has surged over the past year.

The boats try to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, an archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa that has been used as a steppingstone to continental Europe.

Nearly 1,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea in the first six months of 2023, Walking Borders said.

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