At least 25 people have died between the Comoros archipelago and the French island of Mayotte after their boat sank, the International Organization for Migration announced on Monday. the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in East and Horn of Africa. “IOM Comoros is saddened to learn of the death of at least 25 people after the deliberate sinking of their boat caused by traffickers off the Comoros Islands, between Anjouan and Mayotte, on Friday night.”said the UN agency in a statement.

The boat was carrying around 30 people, including 7 women, two children aged six and two, and two infants, according to the accounts of the five survivors. They were rescued by fishermen on Saturday morning. Two other fatal “kwassa kwassa”the name given to Comorian pirogues, have taken place over the last three months in the same area, where the Comoros and Mayotte are only 70 kilometers apart. When the Comoros declared independence, Mayotte chose to remain part of France in two referendums in 1974 and 1976.

The attractiveness of the French territory

In September, a boat carrying twelve people had never reached Mayotte after setting sail from Anjouan. A month earlier, in August, eight people died in similar circumstances. The arm of the sea separating the Comoros archipelago from Mayotte, which became a French department in 2011, is a particularly deadly migration route.

One year after Mayotte became a French department, a Senate report estimated that between 1995 and 2012, between 7,000 and 12,000 people died or disappeared while attempting to cross. Almost half of Mayotte’s population was foreign, according to the latest figures from France’s national statistics institute, in 2017. Of these 123,000 people, 95% were Comorian.