At least one person has died and five have been reported missing following the sinking of a boat carrying more than a dozen migrants off the coast of the Tunisian province of Bizerte (north), authorities have confirmed.
The Tunisian National Guard has indicated that two Coast Guard patrols have managed to rescue six people in the area and confirmed that a body has been recovered at the scene, as reported by Tunisian state news agency TAP.
Sources quoted by the Tunisian radio station Mosaique FM have indicated that 17 people were on the boat, all of them residents of the towns of Menzel Burguiba and Mateur, before adding that the boat started its crossing on Sunday night.
Tunisia has become in recent years one of the main departure points for boats with which migrants from the country and from sub-Saharan Africa try to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports on its website that so far this year about 1,900 people have died or have been reported missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean, a figure that in 2021 amounted to 2,062, above the data for 2020 and 2019.
