More than 100 migrants feared drowned after boat sailing from Senegal to Canary Islands catches fire

Thousands of migrants have been fleeing countries such as Senegal for Spain's Canary Islands

Credit: DESIREE MARTIN/AFP via Getty Images

“When the explosion happened, there was panic and those who couldn’t swim clung to whatever they could. They stayed there and sank with the canoe. I cannot say how many,” a survivor identified as Mr Dièye told Senegal’s l’Observateur newspaper.

Another man said he had boarded the boat with a boy who was in his charge, but he had watched him slip under the water having become exhausted after two hours of clinging on to floating debris.

Previously on the same morning, Senegal’s navy said it had intercepted another boat with 111 migrants on board as part of the country’s cooperation with the EU’s Frontex border agency.

There has been a sharp rise in migrants attempting the long sea crossing to the Canary Islands from West Africa this year, with the UN’s refugee agency in Spain saying that closed borders due to Covid and increased terrorist activity in the Sahel were the driving factors in the change.  

According to Spain’s interior ministry, more than 8,000 migrants have reached the Canary Islands by sea up to mid-October, compared to just 1,000 in the same period of 2019.