A wooden boat from Gambia’s town of Barra has arrived in Spain with 169 migrants including 20 children and four women.

Ebrima Drammeh, Italy-based Gambia migrant rights defender, told Gambiana: “ a migrant boat from Barra in the Gambia arrived in Tenerife in Spain with 169 people which include 4 women 20 children this evening.”

The Gambia is among the African countries hit with mass exodus of its citizens trying to reach Europe through the perilous Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara desert.

Thousands have made it to Europe, while hundreds more had returned home after failed attempt and hundreds more have died.

One of the reasons the migrants would say is the economic hardship facing The Gambia which has been exercebated by the global Coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine which nearly crippled world economy. 

Reporting by Adama Makasuba