Nearly 35,000 migrants were intercepted and rescued off Tunisia between January and June. The central Mediterranean – between North Africa and Italy – remains the world’s most dangerous migration route in 2023
Around 900 migrants, including at least 260 nationals from sub-Saharan Africa, who were trying to reach Europe illegally, died of drowning off the coast of Tunisia during the first seven months of 2023.
In a new updated report, the Ministry of the Interior indicated on Thursday that from January 1 to July 20, 901 migrants were fished out of the sea: 26 Tunisians, 267 “foreigners” (Africans) and 608 bodies which were not identified.
34,290 migrants rescued at sea
The National Guard had previously announced, for the period from January 1 to June 20, that 34,290 migrants had been intercepted and rescued, including 30,587 “foreigners”, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, against 9,217 migrants intercepted at the same time. 2022 (including 6,597 “foreigners”), according to National Guard spokesman Houcem Eddine Jebabli.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, “552 organizers and intermediaries” of these illicit crossings were arrested over the same period of time.
Coastguard units carried out 1,310 operations in the first six months of 2023, more than twice the number (607) recorded in 2022, he said.
Tunisia, some portions of the coast of which are less than 150 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa, regularly records the departure of migrants, most often from sub-Saharan Africa. According to Rome, more than 80,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean and arrived on the coasts of the Italian peninsula since the beginning of the year, compared to 33,000 last year over the same period, mostly from the Tunisian coast and from Libya.
The most dangerous migration route in the world
The central Mediterranean – between North Africa and Italy – is the most dangerous migration route in the world in 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has recorded more than 20,000 deaths since 2014. The 22 June, a week after the shipwreck off the Peloponnese of a trawler from Libya that killed at least 82 people and left hundreds missing, a migrant boat that left Sfax in Tunisia capsized off Lampedusa, causing around 40 disappeared .
An increasingly openly xenophobic climate has spread in Tunisia since President Kais Saied, who assumed full powers in July 2021, condemned illegal immigration in February. Hundreds of migrants have been expelled from Sfax , Tunisia’s second city, following clashes that claimed the life of a Tunisian on 3 July.
Since President Saied’s coup, attempts by Tunisians to leave, desperate for the economic crisis affecting this Maghreb country, have continued at a steady pace.
