Several dead in boating accidents off the coast of Tunisia

Dozens of migrants may have died in boating accidents off the coasts of Tunisia and Morocco. According to Tunisian authorities, four bodies were found on Saturday on the beach of the city of Sfax and three other occupants of a boat that capsized in the morning are still missing.

A refugee boat had already sunk in the region the day before. 20 prisoners are considered missing. According to media reports, 11 migrants have died in a boating accident off the west coast of Morocco.

According to the spokesperson for the court responsible for the investigation in Sfax, Faouzi Masmoudi, 36 passengers from the boat that crashed on Saturday have been rescued. According to him, a refugee boat had already sunk off the coast the day before. Since then, 20 people have gone missing. 17 occupants of a second boat were rescued. According to the spokesman, the missing came from countries south of the Sahara.

The number of migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia since the beginning of March has risen to more than 100, according to AFP news agency.

11 people drowned off the coast of Morocco

Meanwhile, eleven migrants drowned off Morocco’s west coast when their boat capsized on its way to the Canary Islands, local media reported Saturday. The victims included seven men and a woman from the Guelmim region and two adults and a child from a sub-Saharan country. A boat occupant has been rescued.

The Tunisian coastguard announced on Friday that it prevented more than 14,000 people from crossing to Europe between January 1 and March 31. That is five times as many people as in the same period last year. More than 13,100 migrants came from sub-Saharan countries, the rest were Tunisians.

Most boats at Sfax and Mahdia

Most of the boats were intercepted off the coast of Sfax and Mahdia provinces. There, the coast is only about 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa.

More than 14,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, compared to about 5,300 during the same period last year, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry. . (sda/afp)