At least 25 people, including women and children, died after traffickers deliberately capsized a migrant boat off Comoros, the International Organization for Migration said in a statement cited by Al Jazeera.
The boat sank late on November 1, 2024, between the Comoros island of Anjouan, also known as Ndzuani, and the French island of Mayotte. Fishermen rescued five survivors the following morning. According to the survivors, the boat had carried about 30 people of different nationalities, including seven women and at least six young children.
The route is a dangerous and frequently used one. Mayotte sits about 70 kilometres northwest of Anjouan and became a French department in 2011, while Comoros remained independent after the islands split in the 1970s. The report describes Mayotte as France's poorest department but also one with French infrastructure and welfare, a combination that continues to draw migrants from nearby islands.
The IOM said the latest deaths fit a long pattern of peril on the crossing. It cited a French Senate estimate that between 7,000 and 10,000 people died while trying to travel from Comoros to Mayotte between 1995 and 2012, while noting the real total may be even higher. The agency also said two similar tragedies had occurred in the same area in the previous three months.
The packet provides a wider social context as well. Almost half of Comoros's roughly 900,000 residents live below the poverty line, and many have no access to healthcare. That helps explain why people continue to pay smugglers to attempt the crossing in rickety fishing boats known locally as kwassa-kwassa despite the obvious danger.
Al Jazeera's report says the dead included women and children, but the exact number of victims by age and nationality remains uncertain. What is clear is that the boat did not capsize by accident in ordinary weather; the IOM said traffickers deliberately overturned it.
The latest sinking underlines how migration in the region is shaped by distance, history and inequality. Comoros was a French colony, Mayotte voted to remain with France in 1974, and the political and economic divide created one of the Indian Ocean's most hazardous migration corridors.
For rescuers, the immediate task was to find survivors. For the region, the broader problem remains unchanged: people continue to make a short but deadly sea crossing because the gap between the islands still looks, to many, like the only route toward work, care or security.
