At least 25 people have died and more than 150 are missing after a boat full of people hoping to make it to Europe capsized off the coast of Mauritania, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
About 300 people had boarded the long, wooden, fishing vessel in The Gambia, roughly 850 miles (1,350km) to the south, spending seven days at sea before the boat overturned on Monday, the agency said in a statement.
It is the latest in a series of accidents off the coast of west Africa as people increasingly resort to a deadly route rippling with strong currents and limited in coastguard resources.
After two days of strong winds, the UN migration agency said 120 people had been rescued by the Mauritanian coastguard, while efforts to locate the missing individuals were continuing.
As arrivals increase so do deaths along the route. More than 5,000 people, the majority of them on the Atlantic route, died while trying to reach Spain by sea in the first five months of this year, the Spanish NGO Ca-Minando Fronteras said in June.
That is an equivalent of 33 deaths each day, which the NGO described as the highest daily number of deaths since it began keeping track in 2007.
Peoplesmind