In yet another migrant boat disaster, as many as four people lost their lives while 51 others went missing in a shipwreck off Tunisia’s coast, said a judicial official on Monday.
Survivors of the latest reported sinking, near Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, said the makeshift boat had departed over the weekend from a beach north of the coastal city of Sfax with 57 migrants on board.
As of Monday in the early afternoon, “four bodies have been recovered, two migrants have been rescued and 51 are reported missing,” said Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the court in Tunisia’s second city Sfax.
He said coastguard units were searching for more survivors.
The distance between Sfax and Italy’s Lampedusa island is only about 130 kilometres (80 miles).
At least 30 migrants are missing after two unrelated sinkings near the Italian island of boats that departed last week from Sfax, according to survivor testimony.
Authorities in Tunisia found the bodies of 12 migrants that washed ashore north of Sfax between Friday and Sunday, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether they were related to the shipwreck near the Kerkennah Islands, located just across from Sfax.
Masmoudi said authorities were investigating “whether there have been other shipwrecks in this area.
