At least 51 people drowned off the Turkish coast in one of three incidents that left at least 90 other hopeful migrants to Europe missing or presumed dead, officials said on Monday.
As many as 85 people may have been aboard a 15m boat that capsized on Saturday in the Aegean Sea off the western Turkish town of Seferihisar, near Izmir.
“We have so far found 51 bodies, among them two women,” said Orhan Sefik Guldibi, the top administrative official in Seferihisar.
Only six people, among them two Palestinians, were known to have survived the accident, Guldibi said, adding that they had been hospitalised with shock.
The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but Guldibi said the majority were believed to be Palestinians, Somalis and Iraqis.
In a separate incident, about 40 Africans died at sea off Senegal as they were trying to reach the Spanish Canary Islands, police quoted survivors as saying.
They were aboard a boat that set off at the end of November from Diogue Island in southern Senegal, with 130 people aboard. Only 90 were left when it ran aground north of Dakar on Saturday.
Police spokesperson Colonel Alioune Ndiaye said that survivors had spoken of 40 people who “died at sea and were thrown overboard” during the voyage.
“There wasn’t enough to eat or drink,” said one Nigerian survivor, identified as Samuel. “After seven days, there was nothing left.”
At least 50 people were missing after another immigrant boat — also heading for the Canary Islands — sank in the Atlantic.
Officials in the town of Dakhla, on the coast off Western Sahara, said the boat had set out from Mauritania and sank on Saturday 28 nautical miles (more than 50km) offshore.
Alerted by a Moroccan fishing boat, the Moroccan navy rescued six survivors, the officials said, adding that the search was continuing for any more.
In October, an Italian-based monitoring group said nearly 1 100 migrants had lost their lives trying to reach the European Union so far this year. The group put the death toll since 1988 at 10 335.
During an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon on the weekend, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called for a pact to combat illegal immigration in Europe, which he termed “the dramatic result of a collective failure”.
An EU border agency patrolling West African coasts since last year alongside several West African countries has successfully warded off illegal migrants heading to the Canary Islands, the main entry point into Europe.
After a record 31 000 Africans landed in the Canaries in 2006, the number of arrivals there has dropped by more than 60% so far this year.
Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union, has long been a major staging post for migrants from poor Asian and African countries trying to sneak into prosperous Europe.
Guldibi said the vessel that capsized in the Aegean was carrying 60 to 70 people, while the coast guard said in a statement that there were 85 people on board.
Footage broadcast on the NTV news channel showed at least 15 bodies laid out on the shore in black bags.
Turkish authorities detain illegal migrants on an almost daily basis as they attempt to try to cross to Greece by land, or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard unseaworthy vessels.
Under pressure from both the European Union and the United Nations, Turkey introduced lengthy jail terms and fines for human traffickers in its overhauled penal code, which went into effect in 2005.
It has also pledged to tighten up border controls, improve cooperation between state organs and modernise technical equipment to better combat illegal immigration. — AFP