Tunisian authorities say more than 50 migrants have drowned off the coast of the North African country, while 33 others were rescued by workers from an oil rig.
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Tunisia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Mohamed Zekri said on Tuesday that a boat carrying migrants sank off Sfax on the southeast coast of Tunisia on Monday. He said naval units were sent to search the water for missing passengers.
Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the Mediterranean Organization for Migration’s Mediterranean Coordination Office, said on Twitter that the 33 survivors were all from Bangladesh. The boat departed from Zwara, Libya, on Sunday, he said. The nationality of the people who died was not immediately clear.
A spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Tunisia, Riadh Kadhi, said the survivors reported that the boat had carried about 90 passengers when it left Libya. Libya is a frequent starting point for European migrants making the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean.
Tunisia’s official TAP news agency reported that naval units rescued another 113 migrants from Bangladesh, Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa on Monday afternoon when their boat sank off Djerba, an island off the coast of Tunisia.
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