ALBAWABA - A court official told AFP that 13 Sudanese Immigrants have lost their lives, while 27 others went missing after their migrant boat capsized off the Tunisian shore.
The court official revised the initial count of 17 missing, adding that only two of the 42 migrants on board the boat survived after leaving Jebiniana, a small coastal town near Sfax.
According to Farid Ben Jha, a court spokesman in the coastal city of Monastir, only two of the 42 migrants on board the boat survived after it left Jebiniana, a small town near Sfax.
He said an investigation had been launched, and that the migrants were most likely "exploited in a human trafficking case or in the formation of a criminal group to reach Europe illegally".
The victims were all asylum seekers from war-torn Sudan who had registered with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR). According to the initial findings of the investigation, they boarded a fragile metal boat made of scraps that had been hastily welded together.
Tunisian authorities intercepted 69,963 irregular migrants in the first 11 months of 2023, more than doubling the figure from the same period in 2022, according to National Guard statistics.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 2,270 people died attempting to cross the central Mediterranean in 2023, up 60% from the previous year.
