TUNIS: The bodies of 10 migrants have been found on a beach in Tunisia, near the city of Sfax which has seen a spike this year in Europe-bound sea crossings, authorities said on Sunday.

Tunisia has become a major gateway for irregular migrants and asylum seekers primarily from other parts of Africa, attempting perilous voyages in often rickety boats in the hopes of a better life.

“Ten bodies have been found over the past 48 hours by coast guard units” north of Sfax in Tunisia’s centre-east, the national guard said in a statement.

Sfax court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi said it had been informed of the discovery of “eight bodies, all apparently sub-Saharan Africans” and investigators were working to identify them.

The dead migrants were “found between Friday and Saturday” during a windstorm that had possibly sunken their boat, Masmoudi said but noted no reported shipwrecks off Sfax. They may have embarked from another area along Tunisia’s coast, the spokesman added.

Italy’s coastguard said it had saved 57 survivors from the two shipwrecks, and recovered the body of a woman and a minor.

It released dramatic footage Sunday of the rescues, in which people could be seen carried high on the crests of vast waves, while a coastguard vessel soared and plunged nearby.

While some people tried to climb onto the vessel as it rocked, others, wearing black rubber rings, clung desperately to one another in a human chain.

Cultural mediators with the IOM believed there were “at least 30 people missing” after speaking to those pulled from the waves, press officer Flavio Di Giacomo said.

‘Criminal lunatic’

An investigation into the shipwrecks has been opened in Agrigento, on the nearby Italian island of Sicily. Agrigento’s chief of police Emanuele Ricifari said the traffickers would have known bad weather was forecast. “Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is an unscrupulous criminal lunatic,” he told Italian media. “Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let’s hope they stop. It’s sending them to slaughter with this sea,” he said.

According to the North African country’s interior ministry, 901 bodies had been recovered this year by July 20 following maritime accidents in the Mediterranean Sea, and 34,290 others had been rescued or intercepted. Most of them came from sub-Saharan African countries, it said.

The distance between Sfax and Italy’s Lampedusa island is only about 130 kilometres.

Nearly 90,000 migrants have arrived in Italy this year, according to UN figures. Most of them embarked from Tunisia or neighbouring Libya, said the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

Mediterranean route

The central Mediterranean migrant crossing from North Africa to Europe is the world’s deadliest with more than 20,000 fatalities since 2014, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Crossing attempts have multiplied in March and April following an incendiary speech by President Kais Saied who had alleged that “hordes” of sub-Saharan migrants were causing crime and posing a demographic threat to the mainly Arab country.

Xenophobic attacks targeting black African migrants and students have increased across the country since Saied’s February remarks, and many migrants have lost jobs and housing.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2023