The Moroccan navy intercepted 75 Senegalese migrants aboard a boat off Dakhla, Western Sahara, a military source said on Friday (August 18th). Their makeshift boat left the Senegalese coast on August 12 for the Canary Islands in Spain, said the military source, quoted by the Moroccan press agency MAP. The migrants, rescued on Thursday, “received first aid, before being handed over to the Royal Gendarmerie in order to carry out the administrative procedures in force”added the same source.
This operation brings to at least 328 the number of candidates for irregular emigration from sub-Saharan Africa brought back to the Moroccan coast since August 8, according to an AFP report established from Moroccan military sources.
On Wednesday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced that more than 60 Senegalese migrants were presumed dead aboard a canoe that left the Senegalese coast in early July and was found on Monday off Cape Verde. A Moroccan coastal surveillance unit on Saturday intercepted a boat carrying 130 Senegalese migrants which had run aground near Dakhla.
In addition, the Moroccan coast guard announced on August 7 that it had recovered 5 corpses of Senegalese off the coast of Guerguerat, in Western Sahara, and rescued 189 other migrants whose boat had capsized. Migrants are generally repatriated to Senegal.
At least 13 Senegalese died in mid-July in the sinking of their canoe off the Moroccan coast, according to local Senegalese authorities. The migratory route of the Canary Islands, gateway to Europe in the Atlantic Ocean, has experienced a marked upsurge in activity in recent weeks, particularly from the coasts of Morocco and Western Sahara.
NGOs regularly report deadly shipwrecks – whose unofficial tolls, according to them, amount to tens, if not hundreds of deaths – in Moroccan, Spanish or international waters.