TUNIS: Sixteen migrants have died in shipwrecks off the coasts of Tunisia and Western Sahara, officials said Monday, as North Africa faces a spike in Europe-bound sea crossings. Much of the North African coast has become a major gateway for irregular migrants and asylum seekers primarily from other parts of the continent, attempting perilous voyages in often rickety boats in the hopes of a better life. At least 11 migrants died in a shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia’s second city of Sfax, said local court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi, revising an earlier toll of four fatalities.

Another 44 are missing while two others were rescued from the boat that had 57 people on board, all of them from sub-Saharan African countries, Masmoudi added. Survivors of the sinking, near Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, said the makeshift boat had departed over the weekend from a beach north of the coastal city of Sfax. Masmoudi told AFP coastguard units were searching for more survivors. The distance between Sfax and Italy’s Lampedusa island is only about 130 kilometers (80 miles).

Authorities in Morocco meanwhile said the bodies of five migrants, all from Senegal, had been recovered while 189 had been rescued after their boat capsized off Western Sahara. The five bodies as well as 11 migrants in “critical condition” were transferred to a hospital in Dakhla, the disputed Western Sahara’s second city on the Atlantic coast, a military source told Rabat’s state-owned MAP news agency. According to the source, the boat had embarked from “a country located south of the kingdom” and was headed towards Spain’s Canary Islands before being discovered off the coast of Guerguart, just north of Mauritania. It was in a “difficult situation”, the source added.

The migrants who were rescued, including at least one woman, were taken to Dakhla on Sunday and handed over to Moroccan authorities, according to the source. At least 30 migrants are missing following two shipwrecks off the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to survivor testimony, as rescuers on Sunday winched to safety 34 others stranded on the rocks by rough seas. Around 28 people were reported lost at sea by survivors on one boat, while three were reported missing from the second, after both went down in stormy weather on Saturday, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Both were rickety iron boats believed to have set off from Sfax in Tunisia on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Italy’s coastguard said it had saved 57 survivors from the two shipwrecks, and recovered the body of a woman and a child. It released dramatic footage Sunday of the rescues, in which people could be seen carried high on the crests of vast waves, while a coastguard vessel soared and plunged nearby. While some people tried to climb onto the vessel as it rocked, others, wearing black rubber rings, clung desperately to one another in a human chain. The Central Mediterranean migrant crossing route from North Africa to Europe is the world’s deadliest. Over 1,800 people have died attempting it so far this year, Di Giacomo said—almost 900 more than last year.

“The truth is that figure is likely to be much higher. Lots of bodies are being found at sea, suggesting there are many shipwrecks we never hear about,” he said. According to Tunisia’s interior ministry, 901 bodies had been recovered this year by July 20 following maritime accidents in the Mediterranean, while 34,290 migrants had been rescued or intercepted. Most of them came from sub-Saharan African countries, it said. Nearly 90,000 migrants have arrived in Italy this year, according to UN refugee agency, with most of them having embarked from Tunisia or neighboring Libya.

Crossing attempts multiplied in March and April following a incendiary speech by President Kais Saied who had alleged that “hordes” of sub-Saharan migrants were causing crime and posing a demographic threat to the mainly Arab country. Xenophobic attacks targeting black African migrants and students have increased across the country since Saied’s February remarks, and many migrants have lost jobs and housing. — AFP