Mauritanian authorities rescued about twenty bodies and 17 survivors this Thursday after the shipwreck in its Atlantic waters of a boat carrying more than a hundred migrants bound for the Canary Islands.
Sources from the Mauritanian Coast Guard, who did not specify the exact number of bodies recovered, told EFE that search efforts are continuing off the coast of the M’haijratt area, located about 60 kilometers north of Nouakchott, where the shipwreck occurred.
According to survivors, they were traveling in a group of more than a hundred people, mostly of Gambian and Senegalese nationality, who had set sail from Gambia six days earlier bound for the Canary Islands.
However, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras assured that there were 144 people on board the sunken boat, of which only 16 survived and 40 bodies have been recovered so far.
The migratory route from the African coast to the Canary Islands, called the 'Atlantic route', is considered one of the most dangerous in the world, with thousands of deaths each year.
Last year 46,843 migrants arrived in Spain via this route, according to official data, and 9,757 died trying, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras.
