MITSAMIOULI: At least 18 African migrants who were trying to reach the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte have drowned off the Comoros, officials and rescuers said Thursday.
Thirty people had been found alive after smugglers dropped the group off the coast of the town of Mitsamiouli at the northern tip of the Comoros archipelago's largest island, Grande Comore, a minister said.
Survivors said they were from the Democratic Republic of Congo and had been headed to neighbouring Mayotte, an attractive destination for migrants because of its relatively French infrastructure and welfare.
They had been dropped offshore and many did not know how to swim, a young man who helped with the rescue told AFP.
"Last night, we found eight dead. The bodies were recovered by the residents of Mitsamiouli, fishermen and authorities," interior minister Mohamed Ahamada Assoumani told reporters.
"This morning, we were able to recover nine bodies. At present we have 17 dead. The coastguard is searching for the four missing bodies," he said.
"They say they are Congolese, they come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo," the minister said.
The head of the Mitsamiouli hospital said later that the death toll had risen to 18 after another body was found.
By late Thursday, the list of the deceased released by the Interior Ministry included two children aged three and 10, as well as two Burundians.
Even though it is France's poorest department, Mayotte is a popular destination for migrants from the African continent and the poorer Comoros who are seeking a better life.
Many pay smugglers to make the dangerous sea crossing from the continent, with thousands of people dying on the route, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.
Migrants headed to Mayotte have made landfall at the Comoros before, but this was the first time there had been a loss of life, United Nations representative James Tsok Bot said.
Unable to swim
A 25-year-old survivor said he had come from North Kivu in the war-torn eastern DRC and boarded a boat in the Tanzanian economic capital, Dar es Salaam.
"I spent three days in the forest. Then I took a bus to Dar es Salaam. From there, we took a boat. The journey lasted seven days," he said.
"Very quickly, we could tell that the captain had become lost. At one point, we did not have bread or water," he said.
The Comoros are nearly 700 kilometres (435 miles) southeast of Dar es Salaam, with Mayotte another 200 kilometres away.
"We were watching the Barca-Newcastle match when we heard screams coming from the beach," said a man from Mitsamiouli, which is about 40 kilometres from the capital Moroni, who helped with the rescue.
"We hurried over there. We found men, women, children. They said they thought they had arrived in Mayotte," he said.
"The smuggler had dropped them off on a sandbank a few metres from the beach and there they could still touch the bottom. The problems began when they tried to reach the shore, even though many of them didn't know how to swim."
