Rights Activist Concludes Over 250 Migrants Feared Dead After Boat Vanishes from Gambia’s Nuimi Jinack

Gambian migration activist Ebrima Drammeh has declared that a migrant boat carrying more than 250 people, which departed from Nuimi Jinack on December 5, 2025, has almost certainly sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, with no survivors.

In a detailed update shared across social media platforms, Drammeh concluded his weeks-long search. The overcrowded vessel included 164 Gambians, 29 women, and children, along with nationals from Senegal, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, and the Ivory Coast—all sub-Saharan Africans seeking the perilous route to Europe’s Canary Islands.

Drammeh reported exhaustive checks showing the boat was neither intercepted nor spotted by coastal authorities in Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco, or Cape Verde. Inquiries in Spain’s Canary Islands—specifically El Hierro, Las Palmas, and Tenerife—yielded no evidence of arrival. “The boat didn’t arrive in Spain. I’m 100% sure this boat has sunk, and no one has survived,” he stated, emphasizing the significant efforts invested in tracing the group. “These people are all dead.”

This presumed tragedy adds to a grim tally of migrant losses from Gambian shores in recent years. Drammeh noted parallels with other disappearances: a boat from the same Nuimi Jinack area on November 17, 2025, vanished with over 190 people (including 45 women and children); a 2014 sinking from Kartong on October 19; and another from Jambur on October 14, 2024. All followed similar patterns of vanishing without a trace.

The activist expressed profound sympathy for the bereaved families, many of whom lost multiple relatives—sometimes two or three from the same household or compound. “It’s not going to be easy for the family… very sad and will be heartbroken for many family members,” he said, extending condolences to the people of Jinack and the entire Gambia.

“My prayers are with the family and friends of the people who died in this boat. May Allah have mercy on their souls. Amen.”

The incident occurs against a backdrop of escalating migration risks from The Gambia. Drammeh has previously reported that over 893 Gambian migrants died in 2025 alone—840 at sea—across dozens of missing boats, including 26 carrying Gambians. While some recent departures from the region resulted in rescues or partial recoveries (such as a New Year’s Eve capsizing near Jinack with over 200 aboard, where deaths reached at least 22 and many remained missing), the December 5 vessel appears to have met a different, total fate.

Advocates like Drammeh continue highlighting the deadly Atlantic route’s dangers, driven by economic hardship, limited opportunities, and smuggling networks, while calling for safer legal pathways and stronger prevention measures to avert further heartbreak.