Boat left Gambia a week ago with 160 aboard, including Senegalese and Gambian migrants, officials said
\n Nouakchott
\nA boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Mauritania earlier this week, killing 69 people, officials told AFP Friday.
\nThe accident occurred late on Tuesday night when the migrants saw the lights of a town off the coast of Mauritania some 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the capital Nouakchott and \u201cmoved to one side, causing it to capsize\u201d, a senior coastguard official told AFP.
\nOne of the coast guard\u2019s patrols had been able to rescue 17 people, the official said.
\nAn earlier toll had put the number of dead at 49 but a senior coast guard official later revised it higher to 69.
\nAccording to a statement from the migrants, the boat had left The Gambia a week earlier with about 160 people on board, including Senegalese and Gambian nationals, the official added.
\nDrownings are frequent during the perilous crossing between Africa and Europe, with strong ocean currents and ramshackle vessels making the long crossing dangerous.
\nAt least 10,457 migrants died, for example, while trying to reach Spain by sea in 2024, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras.
\nOfficials did not say where the migrants in Tuesday\u2019s accident were headed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boat left Gambia a week ago with 160 aboard, including Senegalese and Gambian migrants, officials said Nouakchott A boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Mauritania earlier this week, killing 69 people, officials told AFP Friday. The accident occurred late on Tuesday night when the migrants saw the lights of a town off the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-499901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n