Death toll rises to 14 from capsized canoe in Senegal

The previous death toll, which was eight dead and four injured, was announced on Thursday by Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Diome during a trip to Saint-Louis the same day.

"All State services have mobilized to provide support and comfort to the survivors", said a statement from the Senegalese Ministry of the Interior. The text gives no details on the circumstances of the new death toll of 14, on the survivors or the number of people on board the boat.

Six more bodies were found on the coast close to Saint-Louis, according to local media on Friday.

The boat was carrying migrants, according to the local media, and the death toll may have been much higher given how full these pirogues are and how many people they can accommodate.

A local authority claimed that the boat was coming from the south. It's conceivable that some of the migrants left after the accident, which happened early on Wednesday morning close to the coast, he continued.

Three further boats, leaving from Senegal and carrying a combined total of more than 300 migrants, are missing, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras, which receives its information from calls made by migrants or their relatives.

A local authority claimed that the boat was coming from the south. It's conceivable that some of the migrants left after the accident, which happened early on Wednesday morning close to the coast, he continued.

Three further boats, leaving from Senegal and carrying a combined total of more than 300 migrants, are missing, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras, which receives its information from calls made by migrants or their relatives.

On June 27, one of them set out with about 200 passengers on board from Kafountine, a small coastal settlement in southern Senegal that is some 1,700 km off the coast of the Canary Islands. From the Mbour region, the other two departed.

On Wednesday, according to Spanish rescuers, the hunt for the missing migrants' boats was reopened.

260 Senegalese "in distress" were "rescued in Moroccan territorial waters" between June 28 and July 9, according to the Senegalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If these vessels matched those mentioned by the NGO was not specified.

On Thursday, Mr. Diome stated that 276 individuals are presently housed in a centre in Morocco and that "they are doing well."

On Wednesday, Caminando Fronteras reacted in a statement, claiming to have been able to verify that the rescues mentioned by the Senegalese government corresponded to other boats "that had also left the Senegalese coast, but not to those that had the 300 wanted people on board".

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