Pakistan mourns feared mass drowning after migrant boat capsizes off Western Sahara

*Event date: 2025-01-16.*

Pakistan was reeling after a migrant boat capsized near Dakhla in Western Sahara, with officials and a migrant-rights group saying at least 50 people died and that 44 of them were Pakistanis. Islamabad said more than 40 Pakistanis were feared drowned in the wreck off West Africa's Atlantic coastline.

The boat had left Mauritania with about 80 passengers, Pakistan said, and the passengers included migrants from cities in the eastern Punjab province. Officials said several survivors, including Pakistanis, were staying in a camp near Dakhla and that Pakistan's embassy in Morocco was in touch with local authorities. The Foreign Ministry said it had sent officials to the area to help survivors, but it did not say how many Pakistanis had died.

Families in Punjab were left waiting for word. Relatives gathered at homes in villages and towns while some survivors began contacting their families. Parents told local reporters that their sons had left in search of work and that the journey had turned into a disaster. The AP report describes messages and phone calls from the boat as evidence that the vessel was already overcrowded before more people forced their way aboard.

The tragedy is part of a wider pattern of dangerous migration routes to Europe. Frontex said more than 50,000 migrants used the northwest Africa to Canary Islands route in 2024, including 178 Pakistanis, and the rights group Walking Borders said 9,757 people had died or gone missing trying to reach the islands. That route is already viewed as one of the deadliest in the world because migrants often take longer journeys to avoid security forces.

Pakistan's leaders expressed grief and called for action against human traffickers. President Asif Ali Zardari said strict measures were needed to curb smuggling, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed sorrow. The reaction reflects the scale of the problem: hundreds of Pakistanis die every year while trying to reach Europe by land and sea, often after paying traffickers large sums for a chance at work abroad.

The broader lesson from the AP reporting is grim and familiar. People keep taking the journey because they see no better option, smugglers keep selling dangerous routes, and families keep waiting for calls that may never come. In this case, the geography of the crossing made the risk even worse, with a boat route from Mauritania to the Canary Islands stretching far enough to turn a single capsize into a mass casualty event.

The route to the Canary Islands has become more dangerous partly because migrants and smugglers keep shifting farther from heavily monitored waters. That pushes voyages onto longer and riskier crossings, which can leave boats overloaded for days before they reach any chance of rescue. The AP reporting makes clear that Dakhla was only the latest point where that logic turned deadly.

The human cost is visible in the families waiting in Punjab and in the survivors trying to contact relatives from a camp near Dakhla. Even where some passengers lived, the journey left households with uncertainty, funeral planning and a trail of debt to traffickers. The episode underlines why Pakistan's leaders are pressing harder against smuggling networks: every boatload can become a national tragedy.