The death toll has reached 69 and there are still a lot of people missing after a boat turned over near the coast of Mauritania while it was going to the Canary Islands in Spain. Around 160 people, mostly from Gambia and Senegal, were on a dugout canoe that went down about 60 kilometers north of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.
Ocean police of Mauritania saved 17 people who survived the tragedy. The operation of searching is going on with the help of the divers who are ready to enter the boat that is underwater. The vessel had left The Gambia six days ago on its way to its unfortunate situation.
Passengers saw house lights from a coastal town late Tuesday night and, according to a senior coastguard official, they moved to one side of the vessel in order to approach the lights and, thus, it overturned. The migrants were on the Atlantic Ocean route, the path to Europe that has become popular among African migrants.
Last year, almost 47,000 people used this perilous sea route to the Canary Islands. The Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras claims that in the year before the current one, the death of those who made the journey was over 9,000. The organization called this incident the most terrible of the summer.
