Some 30 migrants who traveled by boat from Gambia in hopes of arriving in Europe were arrested Saturday by police in the Senegalese capital, police said.
The boat ran aground in front of a police station after suffering damage, the police said.
Some passengers managed to escape, as well as the boat’s captain.
The Atlantic Ocean route, which often runs through the Canary Islands (Spain), was one of the main routes of clandestine migration in the mid-2000s. Sub-Saharan Africans began to prefer Mediterranean routes, passing through Spain and Italy.
But because of the blockade of Libya, whose coastguards prevent the passage of migrants, smugglers are changing their methods by going further west.
Northern Senegal has seen an increase in departures to Europe, often organized with the complicity of fishermen, according to the Senegalese border police.
