Officials are looking for two people, a man and a woman, suspected of being the smugglers or accomplices in illegally transporting migrants. They are wanted for "illegal boarding and clandestine transport, involuntary homicide of passengers to Mayotte," he said.
STORM CHENESO PICKS UP IN MADAGASCAR, MORE FLOODING TO COME
A boat that was carrying migrants from Madagascar sunk leaving 34 people to drown. (Fox News)
"It’s yet another shipwreck," said Roger Charles Evina, representative of the International Organization for Migration for Madagascar and the Comoros.
"Unfortunately, there are no official national statistics on these tragedies at sea. But we see that these are really recurring departures, carried out clandestinely and the final destination is very often Mayotte," he said.
Although Mayotte is a poor archipelago of small islands, it is a French territory which may make it an attractive destination for migrants from Madagascar. The IOM has been developing a program for several months to fight against this illegal immigration from Madagascar, he said.
"One of the actions of our project is to offer income-generating activities to potential migrants, in order to stabilize them in the communities of origin," said Evina. "Because we know, for the most part, that people migrate for economic reasons."