More than 100 African migrants whose boat broke down on their way to Spain were rescued

The Mauritanian authorities announced on Tuesday the rescue of 110 irregular migrants whose boat broke down off the coast of the capital, Nouakchott, on their way to the Canary Islands in Spain.

A statement from the Ministry of Fisheries, to which the Coast Guard is affiliated, explained that a unit of the guard was able to rescue and take care of the boat that was coming from the Gambian capital, Banjul, and that the rescue operation took hours due to the boat’s engine breaking down at sea and as a result of bad weather and difficult climatic conditions.

She added that the boat’s passengers included eighty Malians, twelve Senegalese, four Mauritanians, ten Gambians and other African nationalities. They called for help, and the rescue unit of the Mauritanian Coast Guard began to intervene and rescue them.

She indicated that the rescue operation began at one o’clock in the morning on Tuesday and continued until nine o’clock in the morning, when the intervention was carried out with high professionalism and in difficult weather conditions.