Twenty-six migrants who set sail from Guinea have died off the coast of Senegal when their boat sank, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah said Friday, adding that his West African country was experiencing a migration “haemorrhage”.
“We have officially recorded around 26 deaths so far,” with most of the victims leaving from the Matam district of the capital Conakry, he told journalists.
Reports of the shipwreck had appeared on social media in recent days, but authorities had not until now specified a death toll.
Relatives of those missing told an AFP correspondent this week that the vessel had left at the end of April, with the tragedy occurring at the beginning of May.
Oury Bah on Friday spoke of the thousands of young Guineans waiting in various countries to be repatriated after trying to leave the nation.
“We now have nearly 3,000 of our young people waiting to be repatriated in Niger, 1,200 in Algeria, 400 in the Arab…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
