(Tunis) Tunisian maritime authorities rescued 255 migrants during 17 attempts to emigrate to Italy overnight from Friday to Saturday, the National Guard said in a statement on Sunday.
Posted at 4:47 p.m.
The rescues of the 255 candidates for emigration, “including 170 from sub-Saharan Africa, the rest being Tunisians, took place on the night of August 5 to 6”, according to the press release published on Facebook.
The 17 attempts thwarted by the coast guard patrols had as their starting point “the east coast of Tunisia” and as their destination the Italian coasts, according to the spokesman for the national guard Houcem Eddine Jebabli, quoted in the press release.
An unspecified sum in foreign currency was seized by authorities, according to the official.
As of Friday, the national guard had arrested “in a preventive operation” five individuals who “were preparing to carry out an illegal immigration operation from the coast of the province of Sousse, in the east of the country”, added Mr Jebabli.
In another press release on Sunday, the Tunisian navy announced the rescue the day before of 22 candidates for illegal emigration, all of Tunisian nationality, including 9 children and 3 women. They were on a boat which drifted 80 km from the island of Kuriat, opposite Monastir (center-east).
On July 18, the Tunisian Coast Guard announced that it had rescued 455 migrants – 289 from sub-Saharan Africa and the rest Tunisians – in several operations off the country’s north, east and south coasts.
In spring and summer, thanks to milder weather, the number of illegal emigration attempts by Tunisians and other sub-Saharan African countries to Europe tends to increase.
Italy is one of the main entry points into Europe for migrants from North Africa, arriving mainly from Tunisia and Libya, two countries from which departures have started to rise sharply again in the last two years. .
Between 1er January and July 22, 2022, 34,000 people arrived by sea in Italy, compared to 25,500 in the same period of 2021 and 10,900 in 2020, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.