at least 29 migrants drowned in several shipwrecks off the country

At least 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries drowned in the sinking of several boats off Tunisia, the coast guard announced on Sunday March 26. Twenty-nine bodies were recovered and the Coast Guard “rescued eleven illegal migrants of several African nationalities after the sinking of their boats” off the east-central coast of Tunisia, according to a statement that reported three separate shipwrecks.

A Tunisian trawler has recovered 19 bodies after a boat sank 58 kilometers offshore. A coastguard patrol found eight bodies off the east coast town of Mahdia and rescued 11 migrants whose boat heading for Italy capsized, while trawlers recovered two others body.

Several dozen deaths in February

Several dozen migrants have died in a series of shipwrecks and others have been missing since President Kais Saied’s violent speech on February 21 on illegal immigration. After this speech, a good number of the 21,000 nationals of sub-Saharan Africa officially registered in Tunisia, most of them in an irregular situation, lost their jobs, generally informal, overnight, but also their housing, because of the campaign. against illegal immigrants.

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Most African migrants arrive in Tunisia and then attempt to illegally immigrate by sea to Europe, with some stretches of Tunisia’s coastline being less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, warned on March 20 that the situation in Tunisia was “very dangerous”even mentioning a risk of“collapse” of the State, likely to provoke migratory flows towards the European Union. Tunis rejected this analysis, calling it “disproportionate”.