Over 40 Pakistanis are feared dead after a boat carrying 80 migrants, attempting to reach Spain, capsized near Morocco, according to officials.

Migrant rights group Walking Borders on Thursday said 50 migrants may have drowned. Moroccan authorities rescued 36 people a day earlier from a boat that had left Mauritania on January 2 with 86 migrants, including 66 Pakistanis.

Forty-four of those presumed to have drowned were from Pakistan, Walking Borders CEO Helena Maleno said on X.

“They spent 13 days of anguish on the crossing without anyone coming to rescue them,” she said.

The Pakistan Foreign Office in a statement on Thursday night said its embassy in Morocco was in touch with the local authorities.

“Our Embassy in Rabat (Morocco) has informed us that a boat carrying 80 passengers, including several Pakistani nationals, setting off from Mauritania, has capsized near the Moroccan port of Dakhla. Several survivors, including Pakistanis, are lodged in a camp near Dakhla,” it said.

It added that a team from the embassy has been dispatched to Dakhla to facilitate the Pakistani nationals and provide necessary assistance while the Crisis Management Unit in the Foreign Ministry has been activated.

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar instructed the relevant government agencies to extend all possible facilitation to the affected Pakistanis.

President Asif Ali Zardari in a statement called for far-reaching and effective steps to stop human smuggling.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sought a report on the incident from authorities and said that strict action would be taken against those involved in the heinous act of human trafficking.

Hundreds of Pakistani migrants die every year while attempting to cross into Europe via perilous land and sea routes with the help of human smugglers. In December last year, five Pakistani nationals were killed and 35 others presumed dead after a boat carrying over 200 illegal migrants sank off of Greece's Gavdos island. As many as 262 Pakistani nationals lost their lives in a similar incident in the same area in 2023.

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