Tunisia (EFE).- Tunisia intercepted more than 14,000 migrants, the majority from sub-Saharan Africa, in the first three months of the year when they tried to reach European coasts in precarious boats, the Tunisian National Guard reported this Friday.
The coast guard frustrated 501 attempts at irregular migration and intercepted or rescued 14,400 people, of whom only 1,200 were Tunisian citizens, explained the spokesman for this body, Houssem Jebabli.
A figure five times higher than during the same period last year, which reached a total of 2,532 rescues in the first quarter – 1,657 sub-Saharan migrants – in 172 operations.
This surge in arrivals on the Italian island of Lampedusa, 150 kilometers away, coincides with a campaign of arrests and xenophobic attacks against sub-Saharan citizens after a speech by Tunisian President Kais Said, who accused them of being part of a plot to change the demography and the “Arab-Muslim” identity of the country.
Around a hundred migrants have died in shipwrecks in recent weeks
In recent weeks, close to a hundred migrants, all of them from sub-Saharan Africa, have died in several shipwrecks and at least another 60 are missing.
Human rights organizations accuse the authorities of repressing humanitarian campaigns to help migrants while hundreds of them, mostly from the Ivory Coast and Guinea Conakry, have requested voluntary return to their respective countries after losing their jobs – often informal – and, in some cases, even the owners have expelled them from their homes.
According to statistics from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, last year more than 18,000 Tunisian migrants arrived on its shores – 4,000 of them minors – and at least 600 people lost their lives in their attempt to cross the Central Mediterranean, which also includes the Libyan coast. , and which is considered the deadliest migratory route in the world
