More than 20 dead were pulled from the sea in northern Senegal on Wednesday after the shipwreck of a boat carrying migrants who, according to witnesses, were trying to reach Europe, the governor of Saint-Louis told AFP.

About twenty other migrants were rescued, he added.

He did not specify how many people may have been on the vessel when the wreck occurred. But based on survivor accounts gathered by an AFP correspondent, the number of people on board was in the hundreds, so there is a huge number of missing people.

Mamadi Dianfo, who hails from Casamance (south, on the other side of the African country), said there were more than 300 people on the boat when it left the coast of Senegal a week ago. A second survivor, Alfa Balde, spoke for over 200.

According to the first, the vessel reached the waters of Morocco, where “the captain told us that he was lost, he could no longer continue the journey” and “we asked him to take us back to Senegal”.

The tragedy happened off the coast of Saint-Louis — a maritime area notorious for its danger — added Mamadi Dianfo.

Since midday “we see lifeless bodies washing up”, said the regional governor. The search for survivors continued even after darkness fell, with Navy vehicles, he added.

Always according to the regional governor, the vessel may have departed from Zoal-Fadut, a few hundred kilometers further south.

Senegal has for years been faced with an increasing flow of migrants towards the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago and gateway to Europe, via an extremely deadly Atlantic sea route along the West African coast.

Thousands of Senegalese who want to escape poverty, unemployment and the lack of perspective, as they say, board floating, usually wooden boats or dugouts, up to twenty meters long, that carry dozens of passengers.

They pay hundreds of thousands of CFA francs (one thousand francs equals 1.5 euros) to a trafficker, brave the danger and try to cross some 1,500 kilometers to reach the Canaries, after a journey of seven to ten days.

At the end of 2023, not a day passed without news from Senegal of arrivals in the Canaries, interceptions, or shipwrecks.

According to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEX), most migrants arriving in the Canaries are nationals of Senegal and Morocco.

The number of migrants arriving by sea in the Canaries in 2023 tripled year-on-year to a record 39,910, according to Spanish government data.

Of the more than 6,600 migrants who died or disappeared trying to reach Spanish soil in 2023, the vast majority were lost in the Atlantic seaway, according to a recent report by the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras.

Senegalese President Macky Sall ordered in November that urgent measures be taken to de-escalate the flow of migrants, which is taking on ever greater proportions.