Ten migrants died after the boat sank in which they were on board, off the coast of Tunisia in the Mediterranean, the Tunisian coast guard said today.

Seventy-two migrants were rescued and ten bodies recovered after the boat sank on Tuesday“, outside the city of Sfax in central-eastern Tunisia, the spokesman of the National Guard, Houssem Djebabli, told AFP, stressing that the dead were nationals of sub-Saharan African countries.

Migrants were attempting to cross this central part of the Mediterranean in order to reach Europe.

In a statement, the National Guard emphasized that it prevented yesterday Tuesday “two operations of illegal sea border crossing“, this one off Sfax and a second operation in the northern part of the country.

A total of 76 migrants, including only four Tunisians, were rescued.

In addition to the ten dead, “aged between 20 and 30 years“, other African migrants are missing after the shipwreck off Sfax, Fauzi Mashmoudi, a spokesman for a local court in charge of investigating the tragedy, told AFP.

Twenty-seven migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have died or are missing after two other shipwrecks last Friday and Saturday off the coast of Tunisia.

In late March, the bodies of another 29 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were recovered after three separate shipwrecks off the coast of the North African country.

Tunisia, some parts of its coastline less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, very regularly records attempts by migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan African countries, to leave for Italy.

But migrant departures intensified after an incendiary speech by Tunisian President Kais Sagit on February 21, when he spoke of the presence of “hordes” of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, saying they were a source of “violence and criminality”.

At the same time, the Tunisian president attributed the increase in migration flows from sub-Saharan Africa to a conspiracy plan aimed at changing the demographic composition of his country.

After these statements by Sajed, there was an increase in violence against these immigrants in the country, with dozens of them resorting to the embassies of their countries asking to be repatriated.

After this speech, a large number of the 21,000 people from sub-Saharan Africa without a residence permit lost their jobs and housing overnight as a result of the campaign against illegal immigrants.

Most African migrants arrive in Tunisia and then try to immigrate illegally by sea to Europe.

On Friday, the National Guard announced that it rescued or intercepted “14,406 people, of which 13,138 from sub-Saharan African countries, the rest Tunisians‘, in the first three months of the year, more than five times the number recorded for the same period in 2022.

According to the latest figures released today by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 400 migrants and refugees died between January and March this year as they tried to cross the central Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe, the highest number of deaths recorded in the same period in the last six years