Bodies of 17 migrants found off Tunisia coast

By : Guardian Nigeria

Date: 19 March 2022 6:11pm WAT

FILES-GERMANY-GREECE-REFUGEES-MIGRATION-FASHION

(FILES) In this file photo taken on January 19, 2019, an inflatable boat with 47 migrants on board is pictured while being rescued by the Dutch-flagged Sea Watch 3 off Libya's coasts. - Berlin-based company "Mimycri" recovers inflatable boats, abandoned on the shores of Chios and the near-by island of Lesbos, which both bore witness to the 2015 refugee crisis when hundreds of thousands of refugees landed on Europe's beaches. The fabric from rubber dinghies is transformed by refugees into different sorts of bags, sold on the internet. (Photo by FEDERICO SCOPPA / AFP)

The bodies of 17 migrants who were attempting to reach Europe have been found off Tunisia’s northeast coast, the civil defence said on Saturday.

The bodies washed up off Cape Bon, a peninsula on the strait of Sicily, between Friday and Saturday, spokesman Moez Triaa told AFP.

“The majority were from sub-Saharan Africa but there were also Syrians,” Triaa said, without providing details on where they had set off from or the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Tunisia and neighbouring Libya are key departure points for migrants seeking to reach European shores.

In late February, nine migrants from various African countries drowned after their boat capsized off the Tunisian coast while they were trying to reach Europe.

Earlier this month, the bodies of four African migrants were found in eastern Tunisia, with authorities saying they had probably died of cold or hunger after crossing the Algerian border.

The United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR has said that around 1,300 migrants drowned or went missing in 2021 on the Central Mediterranean route, making it the world’s deadliest migration pathway.

The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 18,000 migrants have died or disappeared while attempting to make the trip since 2014.