Ten Migrants Dead After Boat Mishap In Tunisia

The Tunisian coast guard said Wednesday that 10 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa who were trying to reach Europe illegally died after their boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tunisia.

"Seventy-two migrants were rescued and ten bodies were recovered after the sinking of the boat on Tuesday" off the coast of Sfax in east-central Tunisia, National Guard spokesman Houssem Jebabli told AFP, adding that the dead were Sub-Saharan African nationals.

The National Guard said in a statement on Tuesday that it had foiled "two operations of illegal crossing of maritime borders," one off the coast of Sfax and the other in the country's north.

Only four Tunisians were among the 76 migrants rescued.

In addition to the ten dead, "between 20 and 30" other African migrants are missing following the shipwreck off the coast of Sfax, according to Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the local court investigating the mishap. 

Twenty-seven migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa died or went missing after two other shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia on Friday and Saturday.

The bodies of 29 other Sub-Saharan African migrants were recovered at the end of March after three separate shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia.

Tunisia, whose coastline is less than 150 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, records attempts by migrants, mostly from Sub-Saharan African countries, to leave for Italy regularly.

The exodus accelerated following Tunisian President Kais Saied's vehement speech condemning illegal immigration on February 21.

The presence of "hordes" of illegal immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia, according to Saied, is a source of "violence and crime" and a "criminal enterprise" aimed at "changing the demographic composition" of the country.

As a result of the campaign against illegal immigrants, a significant portion of the 21,000 Sub-Saharan Africans officially registered in Tunisia, the majority of whom were in an irregular situation, lost their jobs, usually informal, and their housing overnight. 

The majority of African migrants arrive in Tunisia and then attempt to enter Europe illegally by sea.

The National Guard announced last Friday that it had rescued or intercepted "14,406 people, 13,138 of whom were from Sub-Saharan Africa, the rest being Tunisians," in the first three months of the year, more than five times the number recorded for the same period in 2022.