Dozens feared dead after migrant boat sinks off Mauritania
About 40 people are feared dead after a migrant vessel sank off the coast of Mauritania, the UN said yesterday, in a fresh tragedy along the Atlantic migration route to Europe.
In a tweet, the UN refugee agency's special envoy for the central Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel, said one person from the West African state of Guinea had survived.
The boat sank off the northern city of Nouadhibou, Mauritania's second largest, according to Cochetel.
"New shipwreck off the coast of Nouadhibou #Mauritania of approximately 40 persons on board, there is one survivor (from Guinea)" Cochetel said on Twitter, without specifying when the incident happened.
Other details about the event remained unclear and some accounts were conflicting.
A Mauritanian security official, who declined to be named, told AFP that the sinking did not take place in Mauritanian waters, but "far from our shores".
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