TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia’s coast guard found 12 bodies of migrants, including three young children, off the Mediterranean coast Monday as authorities struggle to crack down on unauthorized boat crossings from North Africa to Europe.
The bodies were recovered after a boat carrying more than 50 people, mostly Tunisians, sank near Tunisia’s southern island of Djerba, National Coast Guard spokesman Houssemeddine Jebabli said.
Twenty-nine survivors were brought safely to shore as naval personnel and civil defense divers continued to search for the missing, Jebali said. He gave no reason for the sinking, which occurred shortly after the boat left early Monday.
The incident came days after the bodies of 13 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were found Wednesday near Mahdia, a Tunisian coastal town about 140 kilometers (90 miles) from the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than Italy’s mainland.
Tunisia, together with neighboring Libya, has long been the main launching pad for migrants heading to Europe. Thousands of people reach Lampedusa every year in rickety boats, including many whose journeys are facilitated by smugglers.
Tens of thousands of people from as far away as Bangladesh attempt the perilous journey across the Mediterranean every year to reach the shores of Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece. Many are fleeing poverty, war, climate change or persecution.
Earlier in September, five bodies were recovered near Monastir, Tunisia, including those of a woman and a child.
Recently, Tunisia has stepped up efforts to patrol its territorial waters with European funding and assistance, leading to a drop in the number of migrant crossings and deaths.
Tunisia’s National Guard said in June that authorities recovered the bodies of 462 migrants and intercepted more than 30,000 migrants off the coast of Tunisia from January through May. In the same period last year, 714 bodies were recovered and almost 22,000 migrants were intercepted.
About 10,000 migrants arrived by boat from Tunisia to Italy in the first half of this year, less than a third of the total that arrived in the same period in 2023, according to Italian authorities.
“The decline 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 on most routes to European Union countries, where illegal 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, which is increasingly used as an alternative gateway to continental Europe.
The United Nations refugee agency estimates that at least a thousand migrants die or go missing at sea every year. A non-governmental organization, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, said it counted more than 1,300 dead or missing in Tunisia in 2023.
While the number of migrants reaching Europe is falling, the number stuck in transit along the Tunisian coast has risen. Thousands hoping to board boats to Europe are living in encampments on the outskirts of Tunisian towns and villages, where tensions have soared between migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Tunisians and security forces.
