Senegal vows action on smugglers after latest migrant boat tragedy

The death toll from the sinking of a migrant boat off Senegal rose to 39 on Monday, authorities said -- one of the country's deadliest migration tragedies in recent years.

Thousands of would-be migrants have died recently trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands from west Africa.

The rickety wooden boat, known as a pirogue, shipwrecked off Senegal Friday afternoon.

Senegal's Interior Minister Mouhamadou Makhtar Cisse visited the site on Monday and paid his respects before the wreckage, AFP journalists observed.

"We can understand the young peoples' wish to leave, their daily difficulties, the desire to fulfil their potential and help their families", he said. "Leaving is an option but dying at sea should not be an option".

He described the smugglers who help migrants make such journeys as "modern day slave-traders" who "must be tracked down relentlessly".

And he advocated for awareness campaigns to prevent young people from buying into "false aspirations", while urging a system in which Spain would allow work permits for migrants for limited periods of time.

In a statement released Monday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) noted that as of October 26 it had recorded at least 454 deaths and disappearances along the Atlantic route in 2026, adding that the figure represented only a minimum count.

"Many vessels vanish far from the coast, leaving no survivors, no recovered bodies and no trace of what transpired", it said.

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye offered condolences and vowed to clamp down on the networks behind the dangerous crossings.