ANTANANARIVO: At least 21 migrants died when their boat sank off the coast of Madagascar over the weekend, the country’s maritime authorities said on Monday, revising downwards its earlier toll.
“Till date, 21 people have died, two are missing and 24 have survived. We assume that 47 people were on board the boat, according to information from fishermen who were the first to try rescue the shipwrecked,” Jean Edmond Randrianantenaina, director general of the Madagascar Maritime Authority (APMF), told AFP.
The APMF had in an earlier statement said that 22 of those who had “clandestinely taken a boat headed to (the French territory of) Mayotte, but that sank” died. The incident occurred on Saturday.
“All the survivors fled the scene once they reached the shore, for fear of being arrested by authorities,” regional gendarmerie commander Jules Tovoson Andriatsiriniaina said.
“Only one pregnant woman, too distressed by the accident, was unable to get away and was found where the fishermen had left her,” said APMF’s director general, who visited the site of the incident on Monday.
He added the woman would be “a key witness” in the investigations.
The investigators are trying to track down the smugglers, who are suspected to be among the survivors who fled, and establish how they operated.
An illegal and dangerous voyage
Each year, a large number of migrants try to reach the French territory of Mayotte, which lies north of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Over 6,500 people were detained in 2021 while trying to enter the territory clandestinely, according to French authorities.
There is no viable data on how many people have lost their lives attempting such crossings. A French senate report published in the early 2000s found that, around 1,000 were dying each year at that time.
Roger Charles Evina, representative of the International Organization for Migration in Madagascar and the Comoros, told AFP that such departures are quite recurrent and carried out in a clandestine manner with Mayotte often being the end destination.
—AFP/APP
