As many as 50 migrants attempting to reach Spain by boat from West Africa may have drowned, migrant rights group Walking Borders said on Thursday.
Moroccan authorities on Wednesday rescued 36 people from a boat that had departed from Mauritania on January 2, the group based in Madrid and Navarra said, and had carried 86 migrants, including 66 Pakistanis.
The rights group said it had alerted authorities from all countries involved six days ago about the missing boat.
The boat left for Spain on January 2, relatives of the drowned Pakistani migrants have said. According to them, the human traffickers had anchored the boat in the sea and were demanding more money from them.
Alarm Phone, an NGO that provides an emergency phone line for migrants lost at sea, said it had alerted Spain’s maritime rescue service on January 12.
The service said it did not have any information about the boat.
Citing the Walking Borders’ post on social media platform X, the Canary Islands’ regional leader Fernando Clavijo expressed his sorrow for the victims and urged Spain and Europe to act to prevent further tragedies.
“The Atlantic cannot continue to be the graveyard of Africa,” Clavijo said on X. “They cannot continue to turn their backs on this humanitarian drama.”
Walking Borders CEO Helena Maleno said in a post on X that 44 of those who drowned were from Pakistan.
“They spent 13 days of anguish on the crossing without anyone coming to rescue them,” she said.
A record 10,457 migrants, or 30 people a day, died trying to reach Spain in 2024, most while attempting to cross the Atlantic route from West African countries such as Mauritania and Senegal to the Canary islands, according to Walking Borders.
In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Office said boat carrying 80 passengers capsized near the Moroccan port of Dakhla.
A team from the Rabat Embassy has been dispatched to Dakhla to facilitate the Pakistani nationals and provide necessary assistance, the statement further read.
“The Crisis Management Unit (CMU) in the Foreign Ministry has been activated, and the deputy prime minister and foreign minister have instructed the relevant government agencies to extend all possible facilitation to the affected Pakistanis,” it said.
The latest incident came a month after more than 80 Pakistanis drowned after boats carrying them capsized near Greece on the night between December 13 and 14, 2024.
Although, as many as 36 Pakistani citizens were rescued, the rest still remain missing which, as per a report from the Pakistani Embassy, should be presumed dead.
The boats, which departed from Libya’s Tobruk port also carried Bangladeshi, Egyptian and Sudanese nationals.
In separate statements, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the loss of lives accident in the boat tragedy.
PM Shehbaz prayed for the elevation of ranks of Pakistanis who lost their lives in the tragedy and sought a report from the relevant officials about the incident.
He warned of strict action against the persons involved in the repulsive act of human smuggling.
He said no negligence on the matter would be tolerated, adding, “We are taking strong measures against human smuggling.”
Similarly, President also called for far-reaching and effective steps to stop human smuggling.
