TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — The bodies of 13 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa washed up on Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast this week, as authorities attempt to halt illegal boat crossings from North Africa to Europe.
The Tunisian coast guard said the bodies were recovered Wednesday near Mahdia, a Tunisian coastal town about 88 miles (142 kilometers) from the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than the Italian mainland.
Tunisia, along with its neighbor Libya, has long been a major hub for the crossing to Europe. Every year, thousands of migrants reach Lampedusa in rickety boats. Many of them are helped by smugglers.
According to Ferid Ben Jha, spokesman for the local court, all the bodies are from sub-Saharan African men. An investigation is underway to determine where they came from.
Tens of thousands of people from as far away as Bangladesh attempt the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to reach the shores of Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece each year. Many are fleeing poverty, war, climate change or persecution.
Earlier in September, five bodies were found near Monastir, Tunisia, including those of a woman and a child.
Tunisia has recently increased patrols in its territorial waters with European funding and aid, leading to a decrease in the number of migrants crossing the border and the number of deaths.
The Tunisian National Guard reported in June that authorities had recovered the bodies of 462 migrants and intercepted more than 30,000 migrants off the coast of Tunisia from January through May. During the same period last year, 714 bodies were recovered and nearly 22,000 migrants were intercepted.
According to Italian authorities, around 10,000 migrants arrived in Italy by boat from Tunisia in the first half of this year, less than a third of the total number of migrants who arrived in the same period in 2023.
“The decrease in the Central Mediterranean is largely due to preventive measures taken by the Tunisian, Libyan and Turkish authorities,” FRONTEX, the European Union’s border and coast guard agency, said in a statement earlier this month.
The trend is consistent across most routes to European Union countries, where unauthorised migration has fallen significantly this year. However, as border and maritime security in the Mediterranean has been tightened, there has been a spike in migrant arrivals in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago close to Africa’s Atlantic coast that is increasingly being used as an alternative gateway to continental Europe.
The United Nations refugee agency estimates that at least 1,000 people die or go missing at sea each year. A nongovernmental organization, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, said it counted more than 1,300 dead or missing off the coast of Tunisia in 2023.
While the number of migrants reaching Europe has declined, the number of people stuck in transit along Tunisia’s coastline has risen. Thousands of people hoping for a boat to Europe are living in camps on the outskirts of Tunisian towns and villages, where tensions have risen between sub-Saharan migrants, Tunisians and security forces.
