A minimum of seven souls have perished and a significant number are missing following a craft ferrying around two hundred people seeking to enter the European continent sank near the shoreline of the Gambian coast, officials state.
The craft flipped in the early hours of Thursday near the village of Jinack in the North Bank area and it was afterwards located "stranded on a sandbar", the nation's defense ministry stated in a release.
Nearly one hundred people have been rescued so far and a hunt is ongoing for those still missing who were on board the sunken boat that was en route to the Spanish Canary Islands.
The hazardous trip over the the Atlantic has become an increasingly common route for migrants from Africa trying to reach European nations.
Nearly forty-seven thousand migrants reached the Canaries in last year and figures suggest in excess of 9,000 migrants have died during the journey.
Search and Rescue Efforts
After Wednesday's accident, Gambia's naval forces initiated a search operation, involving a number of military boats and a fishing boat that came to assist, the defence ministry reported.
Officials state several of the victims are foreign nationals and that their details are still being checked.
The bodies of the seven people who died were found, and ten of the survivors are described as being in grave health and getting immediate medical attention.
A Common Migration Route
This West African nation is one of the routes taken by migrants seeking to get to European countries, often on dangerous journeys by sea and land.
In recent years, the European bloc has forged deals with several North African countries designed to limiting irregular migration.
