DAKAR: Five Mauritanians were missing after two fishing boats collided off the coast of the west African country, the Mauritanian coast guard and Spanish maritime rescue service said on Saturday.
Twenty-one people, including three Spaniards, were saved from the Atlantic waves after the crash between the Gambia-flagged “Grey Whale” and the Mauritanian “Tafra 3” ship, a Mauritanian coast guard source said.
The Spanish rescuers had earlier given the name of the first boat as the “Right Whale.”
FASTFACT
Twenty-one people were saved from the Atlantic waves after the crash between the ‘Grey Whale’ and the Mauritanian ‘Tafra 3’ ship.
After the “Tafra 3” sank following the collision, five of its 26-strong crew went missing, the source and a spokesman for the Spanish maritime rescue
service said.
“There are five disappeared people of Mauritanian nationality; three Spanish citizens have been saved,” the spokesman added.
One of the missing Mauritanians was an officer, the Mauritanian coast guard source said. A Mauritanian coast guard patrol boat was dispatched to the scene to coordinate search and rescue operations, helped by several fishing boats and a Spanish helicopter, the same source added.
An investigation into how the crash happened has been opened, according to the Mauritanian authorities. According to the Galicia region’s government, two of the three Spaniards were captains on board the ship, while the third was an engineer.
