More than 40 Pakistanis feared drowned in the capsizing of a migrant boat off African coast
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More than 40 Pakistanis were feared to have drowned in the capsizing of a boat off West Africa's Atlantic coastline, which has emerged as a primary point of departure for migrants aiming to reach Europe. President Asif Ali Zardari expressed grief over the deaths and stressed the need for strict measures to curb human trafficking.
Zardari's comments in a statement late Thursday came after a Spain-based migrant rights group, Walking Borders, said that 50 people had died on their way to the Canary Islands and that 44 of them were Pakistanis. The group said that the migrants began their journey on Jan. 2.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also expressed his sorrow over the deaths. Pakistan said it had been informed by its embassy in Morocco that a boat carrying 80 passengers, including some Pakistanis, had set off from Mauritania and capsized near Dakhla, a Moroccan-controlled port city in the disputed Western Sahara.
Almost all the Pakistanis who were on the boat were from cities in the eastern Punjab province. Relatives were gathering at the homes of the victims as some of the survivors were now in contact with their families, officials say. In Dhola, a village in Gujrat district in Punjab, Ahsan Shehzad said that his son, Sufyan Ali, died when the boat capsized. He said that his son sent a voice message to his cellphone in which he said that the boat in which they were traveling was already overcrowded and 25 other people had forcibly boarded it.
