Authorities say a fishing boat that set out a month ago with over 100 passengers has been found
A migrant boat that left Senegal last month was discovered off the coast of Cape Verde earlier this week, with more than 60 of those originally on board presumed dead, the UN migration agency IOM and authorities said on Wednesday.
IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli told the media that a Spanish vessel rescued at least 38 people, including four children, from the fishing boat near the Atlantic island nation on Monday.
The rescuers also found the bodies of seven people, according to Msehli.
Senegal’s foreign ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday that 101 passengers were aboard when it left the West African country’s coastal village of Fass Boye on July 10.
The ministry stated that it was coordinating with Cape Verdean authorities for the repatriation of survivors “as soon as possible,” including a Guinea-Bissau national, who were on Sal island.
Walking Borders, a Spanish migration advocacy organization, said the vessel was a large fishing boat known as a pirogue.
Relatives of the migrants contacted Walking Borders on July 20 after going 10 days without hearing from loved ones on the boat, the organization’s founder, Helena Maleno Garzon told the Associated Press.
