At least 25 people died “after the deliberate sinking of their boat by traffickers”, between the Comoros and Mayotte, according to the IOM

At least 25 people died between the Comoros archipelago and the French island of Mayotte. after the deliberate sinking of their boat caused by traffickers off the coast of the Comoros Islands, between Anjouan and Mayotte, during the night from Friday to Saturday”announced in a press release the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the East and the Horn of Africa, Monday November 4.

The boat was carrying around thirty people, including seven women, two children, aged six and two, as well as two infants, according to the accounts of the five survivors. The latter were rescued by fishermen on Saturday morning.

Two other deadly shipwrecks of kwassa-kwassa, the name of Comorian canoes, have taken place in the last three months in the same area, where the Comoros and Mayotte are only 70 kilometers apart.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 deaths between 1995 and 2012

In September, a boat carrying twelve people on board never reached Mayotte after setting sail from Anjouan. A month earlier, in August, eight people died in similar circumstances. The arm of the sea separating the Comoros archipelago from Mayotte, which became a French department in 2011, is a particularly deadly migratory route.

A year after the incorporation of Mayotte among the French departments, a senatorial report estimated that over the period from 1995 to 2012 between 7,000 and 10,000 people had died during an attempted crossing.

Nearly half of Mayotte's population was foreign, according to the latest figures from the French national statistics institute, in 2017. Among these 123,000 people, 95% were Comorians.