At least 12 Tunisian migrants drowned in shipwreck off Djerba

Twenty-nine other people were saved, a judicial source assured AFP, without being able to give the number of people who were on board the boat.

Their boat sank off the coast of the tourist island of Djerba, in the south-east of Tunisia. Twelve people of Tunisian nationality, including “five men, four women and three babies”, perished in a shipwreck while trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, announced Monday, September 30, the spokesperson for the Medenine court, Fethi Baccouche.

The latter did not give the initial number of passengers or information on possible missing persons, but a local radio station, Radio Tataouine, declared that around sixty people were on the boat before the sinking. Twenty-nine other people were saved, the judicial source assured AFP.

At dawn, coast guard units intervened to “provide assistance to a sinking boat which was carrying a group of people, Tunisians and ‘foreigners'”, the National Guard announced in a statement, using the term “foreigners” to designate sub-Saharan Africans. The coast guards were “alerted by 4 passengers who swam back” on the shore, according to the National Guard.

According to Tunisian media, the boat left from the sandy peninsula of Ras Rmel Hachana north of Djerba, facing the Italian island of Lampedusa. Along with Libya, Tunisia, whose coastline is located in some places less than 150 km from Sicily, is the main departure point in North Africa for migrants seeking to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

From the start of the year until June, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) recorded at least 400 deaths or disappearances of migrants in shipwrecks off the Tunisian coast, after a toll exceeding 1,300 deaths or disappeared in 2023.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), over the last decade, more than 30,000 migrants have died in the Mediterranean, including more than 3,000 last year.