By Rédaction Africanews with AFP
At least 18 African migrants who were trying to reach the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte have drowned off the Comoros, officials and rescuers said Thursday.
They were part of a group of about 50 people dropped off by smugglers in the sea some distance from shore as they tried to reach the neighbouring island.
While some 30 survived, many of them could not swim.
“Last night, we found eight dead. The bodies were recovered by the residents of Mitsamiouli, fishermen and authorities,” interior minister Mohamed Ahamada Assoumani said.
More bodies have since been found.
Survivors said they were from the Democratic Republic of Congo and had been headed to Mayotte, an attractive destination for migrants because of its relatively French infrastructure and welfare.
By late Thursday, the list of the deceased released by the Interior Ministry included two children aged three and ten, as well as two Burundians.
Even though it is France’s poorest department, Mayotte is a popular destination for migrants from the African continent and the poorer Comoros who are seeking a better life.
Many pay smugglers to make the dangerous sea crossing from the continent, with thousands of people dying on the route, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Migrants headed to Mayotte have made landfall at the Comoros before, but this was the first time there had been a loss of life, United Nations representative James Tsok Bot said.
A 25-year-old survivor said he had come from North Kivu in the war-torn eastern DRC and boarded a boat in the Tanzanian economic capital, Dar es Salaam.
“I spent three days in the forest. Then I took a bus to Dar es Salaam. From there, we took a boat. The journey lasted seven days,” he said.
“Very quickly, we could tell that the captain had become lost. At one point, we did not have bread or water,” he said.
The Comoros are nearly 700 kilometres southeast of Dar es Salaam, with Mayotte another 200 kilometres away.
“We were watching the Barca-Newcastle match when we heard screams coming from the beach,” said a man from Mitsamiouli, which is about 40 kilometres from the capital Moroni, who helped with the rescue.
“We hurried over there. We found men, women, children. They said they thought they had arrived in Mayotte,” he said.
“The smuggler had dropped them off on a sandbank a few metres from the beach and there they could still touch the bottom. The problems began when they tried to reach the shore, even though many of them didn’t know how to swim.”