Search for 'boat of the dead'

PRAIA - Cape Verde authorities dispatched a search vessel on Saturday to look for a boat of decomposing bodies drifting at sea near the tiny Atlantic archipelago.

The captain of a local boat said he was alerted to the grisly find by the crew of a passing ship which said it was unable to help the stricken vessel.

"When we arrived at the place, we witnessed a macabre scene. We managed to count 12 corpses in an advanced state of decomposition," Fernando Jorge Spencer, captain of the Matiota, told local media.

He said there was a large box-like structure on the boat which may have contained more bodies, but his crew had been unable to search the boat because of the rotting corpses and he could not be sure of the exact number of dead.

Spencer said all the dead he saw were African men, and he suspected they had been trying to migrate illegally to Europe via Spain's Canary Islands, which, like Cape Verde, lie hundreds of kilometres off mainland West Africa.

Hundreds of Africans die each year attempting the treacherous journey by land and sea to Europe.

- REUTERS