At least 39 migrants died when two boats sank off the Tunisian coast on Tuesday as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian defence ministry said.

The coastguard rescued 165 others, and searches for more survivors are still ongoing off the coast of Sfax, ministry spokesman Mohamed Zekri said. All the dead migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, he added.

The coastline near the Tunisian port city of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and seeking a better life in Europe.

In December last year, around 20 African migrants were found dead after their boat, which was trying to reach Europe, sank in the Mediterranean Sea.

In the same month, at least 120 Europe-bound migrants, including eight women and 28 children, were intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea by Libya’s coast guard.

In November 2020, at least 74 migrants died in a “devastating” shipwreck off the Libyan coast.

In 2019, about 90 African migrants drowned when their boat capsized off the Tunisian coast after setting off for Europe from neighbouring Libya, in one of the worst such disasters that Tunisian authorities have had to deal with.

The number of Tunisian migrants landing on Italian shores soared fivefold to 13,000 in 2020, a human rights group said, attributing the rise to economic hardship in Tunisia.