33 Bangladeshi migrants rescued off Tunisia coast

More than 50 migrants have drowned or disappeared off the coast of Tunisia, while 33 Bangladeshi migrants were rescued by workers from an oil platform, the Tunisian defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Ministry spokesperson Mohamed Zekri said that the boat carrying migrants capsized Monday off Sfax, on Tunisia’s southeast coast, reports AP.

He said that personnel on the oil platform, who saw the boat going underwater, alerted authorities, and navy units were sent in to search the water for missing passengers.

Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesperson for the Mediterranean coordination office of the International Organization for Migration, said on Twitter that the 33 survivors were all from Bangladesh.

The boat departed from Zawara of Libya on Sunday, he said.

The nationalities of the people who died were not immediately clear.

An International Organization for Migration spokesperson in Tunisia, Riadh Kadhi, said the survivors reported that the boat carried about 90 passengers when it left Libya.

Libya is a frequent departure point for Europe-bound migrants making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing.

Monday’s incident was at least the fifth deadly boat sinking in the last couple of months off Tunisia involving migrants escaping conflict or poor living conditions. Earlier this month, 17 migrants drowned and two were rescued after their boat sank off the Tunisian coast.

Tunisia’s official TAP news agency reported that navy units rescued another 113 migrants from Bangladesh, Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa on Monday afternoon as their boat was about to sink off Djerba, an island off the Tunisian coast.

Safa Msehli, an IOM spokesperson in Geneva, tweeted that teams from the UN migration agency were providing humanitarian assistance and shelter.