New drama in the Mediterranean. Since Friday, April 7, twenty migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have been missing after their boat sank off the coast of Tunisia. Seventeen other people, who were on the same boat, could be rescued, said Faouzi Masmoudi, a spokesperson for the court in Sfax, in the center-east of the country.

These 37 migrants had “left the coast” when their boat overturned, according to testimonies collected by the justice. An investigation has been opened to find out the circumstances of the accident.

This Saturday, a second boat was shipwrecked, also off the Tunisian coast. Four migrants of sub-Saharan origin are dead and three others are missing. “There was another shipwreck this morning. Four bodies were recovered from a beach in Sfax and three other people are missing while 36 were rescued,” Faouzi Masmoudi said.

For the past month, AFP has counted at least six shipwrecks. These accidents, which occurred off the Tunisian coast, left at least a hundred dead or missing.

On Friday, the National Guard announced that it had rescued or intercepted “14,406 people, including 13,138 from sub-Saharan Africa, the rest being Tunisians”, over the first three months of the year, more than five times the number recorded. for the same period of 2022. The figures for 2023 are “up very sharply because there are many more departures”, said Houssem Jebabli, spokesman for the National Guard.

The departures intensified after a violent speech, on February 21, by the Tunisian president, Kaïs Saïed, slaying illegal immigration. He claimed that the presence in Tunisia of “hordes” of illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa was a source of “violence and crime” and part of a “criminal enterprise” aimed at “changing the demographic composition” of the country. A majority of the 21,000 nationals of sub-Saharan Africa officially registered in Tunisia subsequently lost their jobs, which are generally informal, and their homes, as a result of the campaign against illegal immigrants.

In 2023, almost all interceptions and rescues took place in areas of Sfax, the country’s second city.