Nine sub-Saharan migrants have died and six others missing after their boat sank off the Tunisian coast of Mahdia while trying to reach Europe illegally, a judicial source told AFP on Thursday.
In addition to the 9 drowned and 6 missing in recent days, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) has counted between 600 and 700 dead or missing at sea off Tunisia since the beginning of the year, after more than 1,300 deaths in 2023.
According to 27 migrants rescued by the Tunisian coastguard, 42 people were on board a makeshift boat that left the Jebeniana area near Sfax (central-east) on Tuesday night, said Farid Ben Jha, spokesman for the courts of Monastir and Mahdia.
Bad weather is thought to have caused the boat to capsize off the coast of Mahdia, about 100km north of Sfax.
The boat was spotted by a fisherman who alerted the coastguard.
Nine bodies have been recovered, six people are still missing and 27 migrants have been rescued, Mr Ben Jha added. The victims are all from sub-Saharan Africa, but the search for the other castaways is still underway.
In a statement, the National Guard said the 27 survivors were rescued on 11 December after being alerted to water ingress on the boat.
The Sfax and Mahdia regions remain major departure points for Tunisian and foreign migrants trying to reach the Italian coast clandestinely.
Along with Libya, Tunisia is one of the main departure points from North Africa to Europe, with some areas of the Tunisian coastline less than 150km from the Italian island of Lampedusa.
At the end of November, three Tunisian migrants died in a similar shipwreck off the coast of Mahdia. The following month, 15 unidentified bodies were recovered off the same coast.
SL/ac/sf/lb/gik/APA