Tunisia Shipwreck: Four people lost their lives while 51 others went missing in another migrant boat disaster.
According to the media reports regarding the Tunisia shipwreck, survivors of the latest reported sinking in the Mediterranean Sea in Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands say the improvised boat left over the weekend from a beach north of the coastal city of Sfax with 57 migrants on board. “Four bodies have been recovered, two migrants have been rescued, and 51 are reported missing,” said Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the court in Tunisia’s second city Sfax, on Monday in the early afternoon.
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Tunisia has become a key transit point for irregular migrants and asylum seekers traveling from other areas of the continent on perilous journeys in pursuit of a better life. Sfax and Italy’s Lampedusa Island are only approximately 130 kilometers apart. According to eyewitness testimony, at least 30 migrants are missing after two unrelated sinkings near the Italian island of boats that departed last week from Sfax.
Authorities in Tunisia discovered the bodies of 12 migrants who washed up north of Sfax between Friday and Sunday, but it was unclear whether they were related to the shipwreck at the Kerkennah Islands, which are just across the water from Sfax.
