- Due to an increase in North Africans traveling by water to Europe, at least 16 people have died in shipwrecks off Tunisia and Western Sahara. Particularly from other regions of Africa, refugees have increasingly used Tunisia as a primary entry point as they attempt risky journeys in search of a better life.
- 11 people died in a shipwreck that occurred on Sunday off the coast of Tunisia after further remains were discovered.
- According to Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the court in Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city, which is close to the location of the sinking that happened over the weekend in the Mediterranean Sea, “Seven fresh bodies have been retrieved on Sunday evening.”
- 57 people were on board the handmade boat as it left a beach north of Sfax in the latest reported sinking, which occurred in the Mediterranean Sea near Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands.
- Elsewhere, authorities in Morocco reported on Monday that 189 people were saved after a boat overturned off the coast of Western Sahara, and five bodies—all of them Senegalese—were found.
- According to a military source quoted by Moroccan official media, eleven persons in serious condition were sent to a hospital in Dakhla, the second-largest city in the disputed Western Sahara.
- The boat was found near the coast of Guerguart, just north of Mauritania, and had reportedly set sail from “a country located south of the monarchy [of Morocco]” on its way to Spain’s Canary Islands.
