Tunisia recovers 11 bodies after boat carrying migrants sinks, 3 missing

The bodies of 11 people have been recovered while three others remain missing after a boat carrying migrants and asylum seekers sank off Tunisia, according to an official.

“Search operations resulted in the recovery of three bodies yesterday [Saturday] and eight bodies today, bringing the total to 11,” the national guard said in a statement on Sunday, as coastguard, military and civil protection ⁠teams backed by helicopters continued to search for the missing.

The boat, believed to be headed towards Italy, set off early on Thursday somewhere between the cities of Zarzis and Ben Guerdane with 15 mostly young people on board. It sank about 14 nautical miles (26km) off Tunisia.

Among those on board were seven members of the same family and a man with his pregnant wife, the head of the ⁠Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights told ⁠the Reuters news agency.

So far, one person has been rescued, the head of a migrant rights group said on Saturday. The sole survivor, wearing a life jacket, said he had been adrift at sea for 48 hours before being rescued by a commercial vessel.

All of the migrants ⁠were from the Ben Guerdane area in southeastern Tunisia, and dozens of young ⁠people gathered late on Saturday in the ⁠city near the Libyan border to demand that search operations be accelerated. Police fired tear gas to disperse the protesters.

On Saturday, Houcem Eddine Jebabli, the spokesman for Tunisia’s national guard, told the TAP state news agency that authorities had transferred the recovered bodies to a hospital on the nearby island of Djerba.

Tunisia-EU deal

Tunisia was once a major departure point for migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach Europe.

But the number of people attempting the crossing from the country has declined sharply in the past two years amid a crackdown and tighter maritime controls supported by the European Union.

In July, 46 rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, issued a joint statement criticising the EU’s 2023 deal with Tunisia to curb migration.

The deal provides Tunisia with funding to carry out EU border controls in the country, leading, the groups said, to “reckless and violent interceptions at sea”, “collective and summary expulsions”, and “normalized [and] serious human rights violations”.

They called on the EU to suspend funding for migration and ⁠border-control activities involving Tunisian security forces.

The International Organization for Migration estimated that more than 35,000 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014.

The Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights has previously estimated that about 10,000 Tunisians have gone missing at sea while trying to cross to Europe since 2011.