At least 140 people drowned when a boat carrying migrants sank off the Senegalese coast over the weekend in the deadliest shipwreck this year, the International Organisation for Migration, a UN agency, said on Thursday.

The boat had left Mbour, a coastal town in western Senegal, on Saturday with about 200 migrants, bound for the Canary Islands. But it caught fire a few hours later and capsized in the Atlantic Ocean near St-Louis, on Senegal’s northwest coast, the agency said.

The Senegalese and Spanish navies, as well as nearby fishermen, managed to rescue 59 people and recover the remains of 20 others, according to the International Organisation for Migration, which cited news reports.

The organisation said it was deeply saddened by the shipwreck, which came after four ships carrying migrants sank in the Central Mediterranean last week and one other sank in the English Channel.

“We call for unity between governments, partners and the international community to dismantle trafficking and smuggling networks that take advantage of desperate youth,” Bakary Doumbia, the agency’s chief of mission in Senegal, said in a statement.

New York Times News Service