After a shipwreck in the night from Friday to Saturday off the coast of Gabès in southeastern Tunisia, two Tunisian emigrant candidates died and five others are missing, the National Guard said.
• Also read: 41 migrants missing after shipwreck in Mediterranean Sea
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The tragedy “occurred at 2 a.m. (1 a.m. GMT) 120 meters from the beach on a boat carrying 20 Tunisians,” the National Guard said in a statement, stressing that 13 were rescued and that the search for more survivors is ongoing .
The National Guard said that “two bodies were recovered, one of a 20-year-old boy and the other of a baby” of undetermined age.
“The Gabès court has opened an investigation” to conduct “forensic expertise” on the bodies and “establish the circumstances of the tragedy,” the press release said.
Search operations are still underway in the Gulf of Gabes to find the missing passengers.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 1,800 people have died in shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean Sea (between North Africa and Italy), the world’s deadliest migration route, since January, more than double the number last year.
The last known shipwreck off the Tunisian coast left 11 dead and 44 missing off the port of Sfax (Middle East), judicial sources announced last Monday.
Sfax is this year the epicenter of attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea from the Tunisian coast, at the closest point, less than 130 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa.