TUNIS: Tunisia’s coastguard has recovered the bodies of nine migrants while six others are still missing after their boat sank off the Tunisian coast, a judicial official said on Thursday, in the latest migrant boat disaster in the Mediterranean.

The North African country as well as neighbouring Libya have become key departure points for migrants, often from other parts of the continent, who risk perilous sea journeys in the hopes of reaching better lives in Europe.

Farid Ben Jha, a public prosecution spokesman for the eastern governorates of Monastir and Mahdia, said that survivors of the latest shipwreck told authorities their boat had capsized after setting sail on Tuesday night.

They had left from the coastal city of Sfax further south, Tunisia’s main departure point for migrants heading to Italy, Ben Jha said.

A fisherman who noticed the sinking boat had alerted the authorities, he added.

According to the judicial spokesman, all 42 passengers were from sub-Saharan African countries, and including eight women. Some of those rescued were from Cameroon, Senegal and Guinea, said Ben Jha.

Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt to make the Mediterranean Sea crossing. Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 kilometres from Tunisia, is often their first port of call. Since the beginning of the year, Tunisian rights group FTDES has counted “between 600 and 700” dead and missing migrants due to shipwrecks off Tunisia, after more than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2024