The Mauritanian Coast Guard announced, on Friday, the rescue of more than 300 migrants, including 40 children, who were on board a wooden boat that was swept away by currents off the Mauritanian coast overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in the latest incident on one of the most dangerous maritime migration routes towards Europe.
The Coast Guard said, in a statement, that the rescue operation took place on the night of Wednesday-Thursday, after the migrants were found in a “difficult humanitarian situation,” while the boat was drifting at sea off the port of Nouadhibou, the economic capital of Mauritania.
According to the statement, the wooden boat had set off from Gambia with 315 people on board, including 191 from Senegal, 123 from Gambia, and one person from Mali, in addition to women, minors, and infants.
The French news agency quoted a Mauritanian Coast Guard official as saying that the boat was drifting when rescue teams found it, but no casualties were recorded among those on board during the operation.
The rescue operation comes days after the Mauritanian Coast Guard intervened to rescue 42 migrants, including women and children, after their boat’s engine broke down and the currents began sweeping it away off Nouadhibou.
Mauritania is one of the main stations on the migration route across West Africa and the Atlantic Ocean towards the Spanish Canary Islands, where boats depart from the coasts of Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia and other regions in West Africa on journeys that may extend for hundreds of kilometers amid difficult marine conditions.
Trips are often carried out on wooden boats crowded with large numbers of people, with limited amounts of water, food and fuel, which increases the risk of engine failure, running out of fuel, or losing direction and drifting away from the intended route.
Data from the International Organization for Migration indicate that during the year 2025, the West African Atlantic Route witnessed the arrival of 17,788 irregular migrants to the Canary Islands, compared to 46,843 during the year 2024, a decline of 62%.
Despite this decline, the route remained extremely dangerous, as the organization recorded 54 drowning accidents in 2025, resulting in the death or loss of 1,214 migrants.
During the first months of 2026, attempts to depart from the coasts of West Africa continued, and the International Organization for Migration recorded continuous activity of boats departing from Gambia and Senegal towards the Canary Islands, while Mauritania remained a major transit and rescue point on this sea route.
