The death toll from a migrant boat that capsized off the coast of Senegal has risen to 39, emergency services said on Monday, 9 November, after rescue teams recovered more bodies along the country’s north-western shore. Only one passenger is known to have survived.

The small wooden boat, a flat-bottomed pirogue of the kind used for crossings towards Spain’s Canary Islands, had set out from Saint-Louis in northern Senegal. It overturned near the Lompoul dunes in Kébémer department, about 180 kilometres north of the capital, Dakar.

Toll has climbed all weekend

The confirmed toll has risen repeatedly since the weekend. Senegal’s Interior Ministry first reported 21 dead and one survivor on Saturday evening. The Senegalese Press Agency (APS) then put the figure at 34 on Sunday, and emergency services raised it to at least 35 on Sunday night before Monday’s further increase to 39.

Rescue teams found four more bodies on Monday morning, and officials said 24 of the dead had been identified and returned to their families, while 11 remained unidentified. Search and recovery work continued along about 25 kilometres of difficult coastline, with strong sea currents complicating the effort.

Authorities have not established how many people were on board, and an unknown number remain missing. An interior ministry source warned that the toll, described as provisional, would unfortunately rise.

When did the boat go down?

Accounts differ over when the disaster happened. Some reports placed the sinking on Saturday, 7 November, while Saliou Diouf, founder of the migrant aid group Boza Fii, told Agence France-Presse that it happened on Friday. The Interior Ministry said the passengers were seeking to migrate irregularly but did not say how many were aboard.

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye offered condolences and pledged to clamp down on the traffickers behind the dangerous journeys. Interior Minister Mouhamadou Makhtar Cissé visited the affected area to express the government’s condolences and solidarity with the victims’ families, and an investigation into the circumstances of the sinking has been opened.

Rights group demands inquiry

The human rights group Action for Human Rights and Friendship (ADHA) has called for a parliamentary investigation into the government’s efforts to prevent deadly maritime crossings, denouncing what it called a lack of lasting results in reducing migrant deaths at sea.

The sinking is the latest tragedy on the Atlantic route from West Africa to the Canary Islands, one of the most dangerous sea crossings used by people seeking to reach Europe. The Spanish migrant-rights organisation Walking Borders, known in Spanish as Caminando Fronteras, recorded 635 deaths on the route between January and May 2026. The International Organization for Migration has also expressed its condolences over the latest sinking.