A migrant boat was shipwrecked on Thursday off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving around 40 people missing, a new tragedy after those in Greece, Spain and already in Italy.

Among the missing is at least one newborn baby, Chiara Cardoletti, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, told AFP by telephone.

The iron boat, which left Sfax in Tunisia, was carrying 46 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Cameroon), a spokesperson for the organization told AFP. Organization for Migration (OMI), Flavio Di Giacomo.

The boat, faced with bad weather conditions (strong wind and big waves), capsized, and the “few survivors were taken to Lampedusa and others brought back to Tunisia, again according to Flavio Di Giacomo. “Among the missing there are seven women and a minor. The survivors are all adult men,” he added.

“Since November, we have noticed more arrivals of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa than Tunisians” by the Tunisian route, “safer than the Libyan route because it is shorter”, he observed.

A phenomenon due, according to him, “to the strong discrimination that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa suffer in Tunisia, which they therefore flee”.

“It is unacceptable to continue to count the dead at the gates of Europe”, denounced for her part Chiara Cardoletti, in reference to the deadly shipwrecks of migrant boats which have already occurred in Italy, Greece and Spain.

Spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo also underlined the fragility of iron boats, poorly welded, arriving from Tunisia and sinking at the first damage.

– “Disaster this summer” –

“We are therefore not aware of certain shipwrecks”, he lamented, calling for “patrols of European ships to monitor the Tunisian route as well as the Libyan route, otherwise we will witness a disaster this summer. “.

An opinion shared by the spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Italy: “A rescue mechanism at sea coordinated and shared between States is now also a matter of conscience”, she said.

Located about 145 kilometers off the Tunisian coast, Lampedusa is one of the main entry points for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Last year, more than 46,000 people landed there, out of a total of 105,000 arrivals in Italy, according to the UNHCR.

Shipwrecks of migrant boats have increased in recent months, while the number of detected entries of migrants into the EU through the central Mediterranean has “more than doubled” in 2023 compared to last year for the same period, indicated the European agency Frontex in mid-June.

On the night of June 13 to 14, an old and overloaded trawler from Libya was shipwrecked off the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece, on the most dangerous migratory route in the world. The death toll is 82, but testimonies from survivors suggest that several hundred people were on board, whose bodies have not been found.

This tragedy occurred a few days after an agreement between EU ministers on a reform of the asylum system, providing in particular for the creation of centers at the external borders of the bloc to more easily return migrants to “safe” third countries refuse asylum.

The European Commission presented in September 2020 a Pact on Migration and Asylum, a package of reforms which it hopes to see adopted by spring 2024, which notably concerns “compulsory” but flexible solidarity between member countries in the care of asylum seekers and a strengthening of the external borders.

23/06/2023 23:52:34 –         Rome (AFP) –         © 2023 AFP