On Thursday, Tunisian authorities recovered six bodies off their coast following a shipwreck. According to the 34 survivors, 30 victims are still missing. The boat had left Libya in the hope of reaching Italy.
Dramas follow one another in the central Mediterranean. A new shipwreck left six dead and 30 missing on Thursday, January 27, off the Tunisian coast.
Thirty-four other migrants were rescued by military maritime units and coastguards after their boat crashed off the coast of Zarzis, in southeastern Tunisia, Mohamed Zekri, doorman, told AFP. -spokesman of the Tunisian Ministry of Defence.
According to the testimonies of the survivors, 70 people, including 15 Egyptians, three Sudanese, and a Moroccan, were on board the canoe, which left Libya to try to reach the European coasts. Thursday, search operations were still in progress to find the 30 exiles missing.
The survivors, for their part, were taken to the port of El Ketef, in the Ben Guardane area, said Mongi Slim, head of the Red Crescent in the Medenine region.
Tunisian authorities and local fishermen regularly rescue migrants from neighboring Libya off their coasts. With the current and the winds, the frail boats, overloaded and equipped with a faulty engine, often drift towards Tunisia.
But the exiles also set sail from the Tunisian coasts, again risking their lives. On January 20, 11 exiles lost their lives in the sinking of their boat, among them a girl aged about ten. According to the survivors, the canoe had left Tunisia with 32 people on board, all Tunisians.
In the south of the country, the situation is such that the cemeteries are reaching saturation point. A new burial site opened last summer in Zarzis, but its reception capacities are already almost reached. In total, about a thousand remains rest in the region.
Departures from Libya and Tunisia on the rise
Last year, departures from Tunisia and Libya were up sharply compared to previous years. Tunisians are leaving their country en masse, plagued by an unstable political situation and an ongoing economic crisis.
Figures from the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTES) indicate that, in the first nine months of 2021, the Tunisian coast guard intercepted around 19,500 migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
In Libya, exiles, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, are fleeing violence in this state decimated by years of civil war. Since the end of 2020 and the signing of a ceasefire, migrants have had to face an upsurge in violence and kidnappings by Libyan traffickers. Off the coast of Libya, the authorities intercepted more than 32,000 people over the whole of 2021, i.e. three times more than in 2020.
This increase in departures coincides with that of arrivals in Italy. Between January and November 2021, nearly 55,000 people landed in the country, compared to just under 30,000 in 2020, according to official Italian data.
The Mediterranean remains the deadliest migratory route in the world. In 2021, nearly 1,300 migrants died or went missing in this maritime area, according to statistics from the International Organization for Migration.
