The Tunisian authorities have found the bodies of nine illegal immigrants in the Kasserine border province with Algeria who died due to the cold, and an investigation has been opened, a judicial spokesman said today, Wednesday.
The official spokesman for the Kasserine court, Riyad Al-Nawiwi, told AFP that the bodies were found in recent days in the “Haidara” area (west of the center) and “they are presented to the forensic doctor” to find out the causes of death.
The “Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights,” a non-governmental organization that follows up on the migrants’ file, confirmed in a statement, on Tuesday, that the migrants are from sub-Saharan African countries and “perished because of cold, thirst, and exhaustion.”
A number of illegal immigrants, the majority of sub-Saharan African nationalities, come across the Tunisian-Algerian border, and then participate in attempts to migrate across the sea from the Tunisian coast, especially from the Sfax governorate towards the Italian coast, which sometimes ends in drowning accidents.
In its statement, the forum “strongly condemned the official silence regarding the tragedies of migration and the policies of militarization of borders and normalization with death by land and sea.”
He called on the Tunisian authorities to establish a system of humanitarian reception and guidance on the Algerian-Tunisian border to ensure the provision of basic humanitarian services to the victims of the deadly migration routes.
Parts of the coasts of Tunisia are less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, and migration attempts are regularly recorded towards the Italian coasts, the majority of the participants from sub-Saharan African countries.
And the Tunisian National Guard had announced earlier that it had rescued or intercepted “14,406 people, of whom 13,138 are from sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest are Tunisians, during the first three months of the year.”
This number is nearly five times what was counted during the same period in 2022.
More than 45,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the start of the year, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry, nearly four times more than in the same period last year.
Tunisian President Kais Saied suggested organizing a meeting as soon as possible at the level of heads of state and government, or at the level of interior ministers, in which all concerned countries would participate, including those from which migrants come, “so that cooperation formulas are agreed upon that eliminate the causes of irregular migration, It is not limited to dealing only with results and effects.”