Madar (Dakar) - The Senegalese Navy offshore patrol vessel Walo rescued 221 would-be irregular migrants off the Senegalese coast on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, the Senegalese news site Leral reported on Friday, 6 November.
According to the site, the group included 170 Senegalese, 48 Gambians, two Malians and one Ivorian, among them 22 minors and 12 women.
The migrants said they had left Barra, in Gambia, at 4 a.m., hoping to reach the Spanish coast, the site said.
After the rescue, the 221 people were taken to the Admiral Faye Gassama naval base in Dakar and handed over to the National Division for Combating Migrant Smuggling and Related Practices (DNLT) for administrative processing.
The operation comes as crossings on the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands rise, with more than 3,200 migrants reaching the archipelago in five days in early November.
