At least 29 migrants drowned in three shipwrecks off Tunisia

by time news

At least 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries have drowned in the sinking of three boats off Tunisia, the coast guard announced on Sunday.

Twenty-nine bodies have been recovered and the Coast Guard “rescued eleven illegal migrants of several African nationalities after their boats sank” off the coast of central-eastern Tunisia, according to a press release which mentions three separate shipwrecks.

A Tunisian trawler has recovered 19 bodies after a boat sank 58 kilometers offshore. A coastguard patrol found eight bodies off the coastal town of Mahdia and rescued 11 migrants whose boat heading for Italy capsized, while trawlers recovered two more bodies.

Several dozen migrants have died in a series of shipwrecks and others have been missing since President Kais Saied’s violent speech on February 21 on illegal immigration.

After this speech, a good number of the 21,000 nationals of sub-Saharan Africa officially registered in Tunisia, most of them in an irregular situation, had lost their jobs, generally informal, and their housing overnight, as a result of the campaign against the illegals.

Most African migrants arrive in Tunisia and then attempt to illegally immigrate by sea to Europe, with some stretches of Tunisia’s coastline being less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called on Friday in Brussels to support Tunisia, which is facing a serious financial crisis, under penalty of “triggering an unprecedented wave of migration” towards Europe. She also confirmed a project for an Italo-French mission to Tunisia in which the Italian and French foreign ministers would participate.

The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, warned on March 20 that the situation in Tunisia was “very dangerous”, even mentioning a risk of “collapse” of the state likely to “cause migratory flows towards the Union European. Tunis rejected this analysis, calling it “disproportionate”.

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