The rescued and dead passengers, who were found off the Kerkennah Islands, aimed to reach Europe and were all from sub-Saharan African countries, said Zied Sdiri, head of civil defence in the nearby city of Sfax.
Totalling 110, the migrants were on board two makeshift boats that set sail off “the coast near Sfax on the night of December 31 to January 1,“ a National Guard official said on condition of anonymity.
Sdiri said 15 out of the 83 rescued were taken to a hospital, without providing further details.
It was the latest such tragedy off Tunisia over the past month.
Days earlier on December 18, the National Guard said at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off Sfax, with five rescued.
‘Hundreds of children’
Among them are also thousands of Tunisians seeking to leave their country which is grappling with economic woes marked by high inflation, unemployment, and sluggish growth.
The deal, strongly supported by Italy’s hard-right government, aimed to bolster Tunisia’s capacity to prevent boats leaving its shore, with some money also going to United Nations agencies assisting migrants.
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) had counted “between 600 and 700” migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia in 2024, compared with more than 1,300 in 2023.
It added that the tally included “hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating through the Mediterranean. The majority are fleeing violent conflict and poverty.”
Frontex, the EU’s border agency, has said that irregular border crossings were down 64 percent last year through September for the central Mediterranean route.
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