Today, September 26,2022 marks twenty years after the Le Joola ferry sank, the Senegalese town where half of the nearly 1,900 dead lived will on Monday hold commemorations for a "wound that never heals".

A total of 1,863 people drowned or were lost — surpassing the Titanic toll of more than 1,500 some 90 years earlier.

The ferry played a major role in the town in the isolated Casamance enclave, providing a lifeline to Dakar and transporting agricultural produce as well as tourists.

The Casamance, almost separated from the rest of Senegal by the tiny state of The Gambia, had since 1982 been wracked by a separatist rebellion. September 2002 saw a surge in attacks.

According to an eye witness account, On September 26, more than 1,928 people officially crowded onto the ferry, which had a capacity of 536 passengers.

Victims' associations say more than 2,000 passengers from more than a dozen countries died, and only 65 survived.

With crowds gathering at the port the morning after, the prime minister announced Le Joola had capsized.

Two decades on, many questions still remain unanswered.