African migrants drown off Gabon

More than 35 migrants drowned when their boat was wrecked off Gabon's capital Libreville, police and morgue officials said yesterday after the bodies were washed up on the city's seafront.

The victims carried identity papers from several West African countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Togo, a Reuters reporter who saw the bodies said.

A rickety open wooden boat, of the kind often used by migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa, was found smashed on rocks not far from the bodies.

"It's the first time in 50 years that we've seen a human catastrophe like this," one Gabonese police officer said, adding it was the worst disaster involving migrants he could remember in Libreville.

Thousands of poor African job-seekers risk their lives each year trying to get to Spain's Canary Islands to seek a better life in Europe. Hundreds die in the attempt.

"We expect the sea to wash ashore more bodies," firefighter captain Michel Etoure told Reuters, pointing at the rising tide.

It might take several days before the final toll was known, he said, adding that the shipwreck probably occurred in the night between Monday and yesterday.

There was one child among the dead, most of whom were adult men.

People traffickers regularly cram 200 or 300 people into pirogues, the open wooden boats used across West Africa, powered by sometimes ancient outboard motors and poor quality fuel.

Bodies of migrants who drown trying to reach Europe often come ashore on the West African coast. Gabon's own relative prosperity, funded by oil revenues, has also made it a favoured destination for illegal migrants from nearby countries.

With investment from former colonial ruler France, Gabon was one of the first sub-Saharan African countries to exploit its crude oil reserves, which have made its 1.5 million people among the continent's richest.

But the wealth is far from evenly spread, and many people - immigrants in particular - survive in poverty.

For many migrants, the journey ends in the wooden shacks and breeze-block houses in the shadow of Libreville's offices. The slums are full of poor workers from Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Togo and elsewhere in West Africa.