TUNIS: The coastguards have recovered the bodies of 41 migrants off the Tunisian coast as the number of people dying as they try to reach Europe from Africa soars, BBC News has reported.
It quoted a senior official saying more than 200 people had drowned in the last 10 days. Tunisian mortuaries were running out of space and the authorities were struggling to contain the surge in attempted crossings, he said.
The country in north African has taken over from neighbouring Libya as the main embarkation point for migrants. Parts of the country’s coastline are only about 150 kms from the Italian island, Lampedusa which is frequently used as a crossing point to the mainland.
“On Tuesday, we had more than 200 bodies, well beyond the capacity of the hospital, which creates a health problem,” said Faouzi Masmoudi, justice official in the port city of Sfax where the central mortuary for around a million people is sited.
“There is a problem with large numbers of corpses arriving on the shore. We don’t know who they are or what shipwreck they came from and the number is increasing.”
The United Nation’s migration agency said that when people departing from the Libyan coast were also included, a total of nearly 300 people had died over the past week-and-a-half. As many as 824 people had died so far in 2023. But Tunisia has become the main departure point now for people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East and Africa.
