The Tunisian Coast Guard recovered the body of a young child on Friday after a boat carrying illegal African migrants sank off Tunisia, a journalist working with AFP noted.
The child’s body, dressed in pink winter overalls and a gray wool hat, was recovered during a patrol off the town of Sfax in east-central Tunisia, according to the journalist who accompanied the Coast Guard aboard their speedboat.
A Coast Guard official told AFP that it was a little girl.
His body was recovered in an area between the coast of Sfax and the island of Kerkennah.
The Coast Guard estimated the child could be of Cameroonian nationality as more than 200 migrants from that country have been rescued from Sfax in the past two days.
The child’s mother is missing, according to the same source.
When asked by AFP, the Cameroonian embassy in Tunis could not confirm this information.
Prosecutor General and Sfax Court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi told AFP that two boats carrying illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa were wrecked off the coast of the city on Wednesday.
Six people died in the first shipwreck while 39 migrants were rescued. Twelve passengers from the second damaged boat were rescued and 41 others, including six children, are missing, according to the same source.
The bodies of five of those children have since been recovered, the Coast Guard official said, adding that a Malian and a Senegalese are among them, while the nationalities of the other three, including the girl rescued on Friday, are not yet known.
Sfax, the second largest city in Tunisia, is the starting point for numerous illegal crossings of illegal migrants to Italy.
Certain parts of Tunisian territory are less than 150 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa and illegal migration attempts by people from sub-Saharan Africa, but also by many Tunisians, are regularly recorded.
The exodus of African migrants from Tunisia intensified after President Kais Saied delivered a speech on February 21 condemning illegal immigration, describing it as a demographic threat to his country.
Tunisia is in a serious political and economic crisis, which is also forcing many Tunisians to illegally sail to Europe at the risk of their lives.
The Tunisian National Guard announced on May 25 the arrest of a major smuggler who has already been sentenced to a total of 79 years in prison and accused of organizing an exit of Tunisian migrants that ended in a shipwreck and 20 dead.