In a half-built home off the busy beaches of the fishing town Mbour, relatives and neighbours gather to grieve without a body to bury.
A young woman walks in and greets each of us with a handshake and curtsy.
She turns to kneel at the feet of the man sitting in the centre room and suddenly, her posture collapses as she breaks into deep sobs. She was set to marry his youngest son, Mohamed.
Mohamed was one of at least 50 people who recently died attempting the dangerous Atlantic route from Senegal to the Canary Islands.
Their half-sunken boat was found 60 miles south of the Canary Island El Hierro on 29 April – none of their bodies were found in or around the wreckage.
“It was announced that there were only nine survivors in the Spanish hospital. When the survivors became conscious and they were asked – we knew Mohamed had died,” says his father Oumar.
“I had decided to seal his marriage. That is why his fiancee was sobbing when she arrived – her hope was shattered.”
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Three of Mohamed’s older brothers are currently in Spain, struggling to live without residency permits. Oumar says two of them left from Senegal and one from Mauritania to the Canary Islands by boat over the last three years.
The Spanish non-profit organisation Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) says more than 6,600 migrants died on the Atlantic route last year as a record 55,618 migrants arrived in Spain by boat with most of them landing in the Canary Islands, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry.
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Despite the risks, the route is gaining popularity as the land journey to the Mediterranean Sea through North Africa has become increasingly militarised, with Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania in bilateral agreements with the European Union (EU) to stop migration.
In January, 7,270 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands – around the same number of arrivals there were in the first six months of last year.
Caminando Fronteras describes the Atlantic route as the deadliest and busiest migrant passage in the world.
Oumar is pained by the loss, but not shocked that Mohamed left to join his brothers. Life in fishing towns across Senegal has become unbearable.
“When I was younger and deep-sea fishing, I didn’t face the problems we have now of industrial fishing boats and the big nets that they use.
“All of this has destroyed the sea. It is happening right now and here in our area and our sons are aware that there are no resources,” says Oumar.
“This is the reason our sons are taking boats and leaving.”
Illegal and unregulated fishing by large Chinese trawlers and Senegal’s long-standing EU fisheries partnership are at the heart of discontent around the depletion of fish stocks and the devastation of artisanal fishing communities.
Under the current agreement, the EU pays the Senegalese state €2.6m (£2.2m) a year to allow 45 European vessels from Spain and France to fish 10,000 tonnes of tuna and 1,750 tonnes of hake. That is the equivalent of 0.005 euros per tonne of fish.
“The issues with the fishing agreement, which started in the 1970s, is that almost all the areas that it applies to are exploited.
“These fishing agreements are not able to develop in a way to protect the fisheries – a renegotiation in a true way that can benefit these countries should be done,” says Dr Aliou Ba, senior ocean campaign manager for Greenpeace Africa.
Senegal’s new president Bassirou Diomaye Faye has declared he will review fishing deals and licences signed with its partners that include the European Union to guarantee they are structured to benefit the fishing sector.
“This is a very good statement. There have been years of calls for the audit of the Senegalese industrial fleet. He also requested a renegotiation of this fishing agreement,” says Dr Ba.
“It can be a real, fair fishing agreement. This can be a precedent of African countries defending the interest of communities, of the people.”
But an alternate ecosystem of smugglers and young men eager to follow family and friends to Europe may have already been cemented.
On a beach an hour away from the government buildings of Dakar, a fisherman turned smuggler tells us around 200 people in the area died trying to get to the Canary Islands, but demand is higher than ever.
“In Senegal at this moment, we have no time to think too much because we have done so much thinking and don’t have solutions. The only thing we see is to go to Europe.”
Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.
Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime.
After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.
Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much more precarious.
The least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa say their calls for a portion of the fund to be allocated to them have been ignored.
Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is one of the representatives who walked out.
“We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there,” he said on behalf of more than 40 small island and developing states, whose shorelines are being lost to rising sea levels.
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Shortly after he made a veiled threat of leaving COP29 altogether, saying: “We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE.
“If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”
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Evans Njewa, who chairs a group of more than 40 least developed countries, said the current deal is “unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”
The last official draft on Friday pledged $250bn a year annually by 2035.
This is more than double the previous goal of $100bn set 15 years ago, but nowhere near the annual $1.3trn that experts say is needed.
Sky News understands some developed countries like the UK were this morning willing to bump up the goal to $300bn.
Developing countries are angry not just about the finance negotiations, but also on how to make progress on a pledge from last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
A group of oil and producing countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, have tried to dilute that language, while the UK and island state are among those that have fought to keep it in.
Mr Schuster said all things being negotiated contain a “deplorable lack of substance”.
He added: “We need to see progress and follow up on the transition away from fossil fuels that we agreed last year. We have been asked to forget all about that at this COP, as though we are not in a critical decade and as though the 1.5C limit is not in peril.”
“We need to be shown the regard which our dire circumstances necessitate.”
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.
Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.
State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.
Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.
The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.
At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.
The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).
A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.
The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.
Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.
Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.
US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.
Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.
According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.
It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.
In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.
Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.
“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”
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He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”
Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.
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General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.
Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”
Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.
NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.
Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.
EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’
Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.
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Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?
Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.
At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.