The Tunisian coastguard Friday recovered the body of a young girl thought to have drowned when two vessels carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean, a journalist working with AFP said. The body, dressed in a pink jumpsuit and grey woollen cap, was discovered by a patrol off Sfax, Tunisia’s second city, according to the journalist who was accompanying the coastguard. A coastguard official later told AFP that the child was a girl. She was probably from Cameroon, as more than 200 Cameroonians had been rescued over the past two days, the coastguard undertaking the operation said. The child’s mother was believed to have been one of the people missing after the two boats sank earlier in the week, they added.
The Cameroonian embassy in Tunis was unable to confirm this information when contacted by AFP. Local court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi told AFP that two boats carrying migrants from sub-Saharan Africa sank off Sfax on Wednesday. Six people died and 39 were rescued from the first boat, while 12 people from the second boat were rescued and 41 others, including six children, were missing, he said.The bodies of five of the children were later found, the coastguard official said, including one Malian and one Senegalese. The nationalities of the others, including the girl found on Friday, have yet to be confirmed, he added.
Tunisia, whose coastline is less than 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the Italian island of Lampedusa, has long been a favoured launching point for migrants attempting the perilous sea journey from North Africa to Europe. The flow of migrants from Tunisia has intensified since President Kais Saied made a fiery speech on February 21 claiming that illegal immigration was a demographic threat to Tunisia.
The country is in the grips of a long-running socio-economic crisis, with spiralling inflation and persistently high unemployment, pushing some of its citizens to seek a better life abroad. On May 26, authorities announced the arrest of an alleged smuggler in Sfax, wanted in connection with the September deaths of 20 Tunisian migrants who drowned off the coast of Chebba.
