TUNIS (Reuters) – Seven other bodies, believed to be migrants who drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, have washed ashore, local authorities said on Monday.
On Sunday, a judicial official said the migrants aboard the boat that sank off the Tunisian island of Kerkennah near the port of Sfax were from sub-Saharan countries.
From January 1 to July 20 this year, the Tunisian coastguard recovered 901 bodies of drowned migrants off the coast, an unprecedented number.
The North African country is facing a record wave of migration this year and frequent catastrophes with boats heading for the Italian coast.
Tunisia has replaced Libya as the region’s main departure point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East in hopes of a better life in Europe
(Reporting by Latifa Guesmi, written by Angus McDowall, edited by Andrew Cawthorne)
