A migratory drama played out thousands of miles from the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania to the Dominican Republic.

On Tuesday 6 August, a pirogue containing 14 bodies was found off the coast of the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean Sea, near the beach of Río San Juan, in the north of the country bordering Haiti. In a press release, the Dominican Republic Navy explains: « We found 14 lifeless bodies in skeletal condition in the pirogue. After locating a vessel of unknown origin and manufacture on the coast of the Río San Juan, 14 skeletons were found on board with identities of Senegalese and Mauritanian origin. » Adding that the victims are aged between 24 and 33. Mobile phones and personal belongings, as well as a rucksack « containing packets of a substance similar to cocaine or heroin« , were « handed over to the National Directorate for Drugs Control (Dncd) for analysis« . Investigations are continuing into this tragedy of foreign origin.

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A fisherman who noticed the pirogue adrift in the Caribbean Sea alerted the emergency services. In the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, the migrants, who were probably bound for Spain, were lost or drifted towards the Caribbean by the sea winds. The would-be immigrants probably died of hunger and thirst.

According to Infos migrants, this « is not the first time that a boat intended to reach the Canaries, west of Morocco, has been found on the other side of the Atlantic« . In mid-April, nine bodies of migrants were found by fishermen off the coast of Brazil, again some 6,000 km from the African coast. The pirogue set sail from the Mauritanian coast with around twenty passengers. None of them were found.