Samples have been taken to establish the our bodies of the migrants and refugees ‘because of the extent of decomposition’.
The our bodies of 16 migrants and refugees have been recovered by Tunisia’s coastguard off the nation’s japanese coast, the Nationwide Guard says, the most recent migrant boat catastrophe within the Mediterranean.
“The our bodies have been discovered on the weekend and on Monday … The victims haven’t been recognized as a result of the our bodies had decomposed,” a senior official within the Nationwide Guard, Houssem Eddine Jebabli, instructed Reuters information company.
Samples have been taken to establish the our bodies “because of the extent of decomposition”, mentioned Farid Ben Jha, spokesman for the Monastir and Mahdia governorates’ public prosecution.
He mentioned the our bodies have been present in three totally different areas in Mahdia, considered one of Tunisia’s hotspots for irregular migration.
Tunisia and neighbouring Libya have develop into key departure points for migrants and refugees, usually from different African nations, who threat perilous Mediterranean Sea journeys within the hopes of higher lives in Europe.
Italy, whose Lampedusa island is simply 150km (90 miles) from Tunisia, is commonly their first port of name. Yearly, tens of hundreds of individuals try and make the crossing.
Final month, not less than 15 Tunisian individuals died, including three infants, and 10 others went lacking after their boat sank off the Tunisian coast at Djerba as they sought to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Not less than 29 others have been rescued.
The our bodies of 13 sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees have been additionally recovered in the identical space final month.
Since January 1 this yr, not less than 103 makeshift boats have capsized and 341 our bodies have been recovered off Tunisia’s coast, in response to the Ministry of the Inside.
Greater than 1,300 individuals died or disappeared final yr in shipwrecks off the North African nation, in response to the Tunisian FTDES rights group.
The Worldwide Group for Migration has mentioned greater than 30,309 migrants and refugees have died within the Mediterranean up to now decade, together with greater than 3,000 final yr throughout the huge sea.
