Boat carrying 112 migrants runs aground in Dakar as captain abandons vessel

A pirogue carrying 112 migrants ran aground Tuesday morning in Dakar’s Ouakam neighborhood after its captain abandoned the vessel, local authorities said.

The migrants, who local officials said were from Senegal, Mali and Gambia, had departed from Gambia and were believed to be attempting the roughly 1,500-kilometer Atlantic crossing to Spain’s Canary Islands. “We were informed of the interception of a pirogue full of migrants who wanted to leave for Europe,” Abdou Aziz Guèye, mayor of Ouakam, said. He said fishermen first spotted the boat and lent its occupants an engine after the craft no longer had one.

Local police said the captain fled with the engine in the morning. Officers established a temporary processing center on arrival to conduct identity checks on the passengers, authorities said.

The Canary Islands route has re-emerged as a major transit path from West Africa since 2020. Spanish Interior Ministry figures show nearly 47,000 people disembarked in the Canary Islands in 2024, up from nearly 40,000 in 2023. Many make the crossing in large open-top wooden boats known locally as pirogues.

The Atlantic crossing is widely regarded as among the world’s deadliest migration routes. There is no precise regional death toll because departures from West Africa are often unrecorded, but the Spanish migrant rights group Walking Borders has estimated that deaths reached into the thousands in recent years. Aid workers in the Canary Islands have reported a growing number of women and children among new arrivals, reversing a trend in which most migrants were young men.

Guèye described the scene in Ouakam as “distressing” and cautioned residents and would-be migrants about the hazards of the journey. In 2024, the European Union signed a 210 million euro agreement with Mauritania aimed at curbing smuggling operations that launch boats toward Spain, but migration flows across the Atlantic have continued despite broader declines in irregular crossings to Europe.

Seasonal patterns affect departures: authorities and aid groups say attempts often rise in Senegal’s winter months when calmer seas reduce wave intensity, though departures occur year-round. Local police in Dakar were continuing identity verification and processing of those aboard the grounded pirogue on Tuesday, and no immediate statement was released about any arrests or charges related to the captain’s reported abandonment of the boat.