Migrant Boat Sinkings

A Panama-flagged cargo vessel, the Ocean Winner, has sunk off the eastern coast of India with 24 crew members on board, the Indian Coast Guard said on Saturday. Rescue services lost contact with the ship on Saturday, and two crew members have so far been rescued from life rafts.

The vessel was approximately 240 nautical miles off the coast of Odisha when it went down. The crew included 20 Chinese nationals, three seamen from Myanmar, and one from Bangladesh.

The Ocean Winner was carrying a cargo of iron ore from Paradip port in Odisha to Singapore, having departed the port on Thursday. Search and rescue operations are ongoing.

At least 13 Tunisian nationals are missing after a migrant boat capsized off Tunisia's southeastern coast while heading for Italy. Two survivors were pulled from the water, one of whom remains in critical condition, according to the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights.

The vessel departed the El Ketef area near the Libyan border around midnight between Wednesday and Thursday with approximately 15 people aboard and sank roughly six hours later. Search operations continue in waters off the coast.

The incident comes amid scrutiny of a 2023 European Union agreement with Tunisia to curb migration, which 46 rights groups have criticized. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other organizations voiced concern in a July statement. The International Organization for Migration estimates more than 35,000 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014.

Mauritania's coastguard rescued 315 migrants, including 40 children and adolescents, from a disabled wooden pirogue drifting off the fishing port of Nouadhibou during the night of Wednesday to Thursday.

The overloaded vessel had departed from The Gambia carrying 191 Senegalese, 123 Gambians and one Malian national and was found adrift in what authorities described as a difficult humanitarian situation. The rescue comes days after Mauritanian forces pulled 42 migrants from another drifting boat in the same waters.

The Atlantic route to the Canary Islands remains one of the deadliest migration corridors. In July alone, 144 people died or went missing attempting the crossing, according to the UNHCR.

Spanish police have arrested five people accused of running migrant smuggling networks that ferried people from the North African enclave of Ceuta to the Iberian Peninsula, charging as much as 9,000 euros per person.

The investigation began after a boat was found stranded on the rocky coast of Benzú in Ceuta, authorities said. Four suspects were detained — two in Ceuta and two in La Línea de la Concepción, near Cádiz — for allegedly housing migrants in private residences and garages before moving them to embarkation points. A fifth man was arrested in connection with an August 14 crossing in which seven migrants, each paying 8,000 euros, were transported packed together without life jackets.

The arrests follow deadly unrest in late July, when up to 72,000 people entered Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco and dozens lost their lives in the upheaval.