2023-04-29 10:11:06
The central morgue of Sfax, a Tunisian city from which many migrants have left since the beginning of the year, is overwhelmed by a large number of bodies following a series of shipwrecks, judicial sources and an NGO told AFP. .
“Tuesday, we had more than 200 bodies, well beyond the capacity of the hospital (Habib Bourguiba of Sfax, editor’s note), which creates a health problem”, Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the court in Sfax, a central-eastern agglomeration of one million inhabitants, told AFP on Friday.
“We don’t know who they are or what shipwreck they come from and the number is growing,” he added. According to him, “there are funerals almost every day to reduce the pressure on hospitals”. On April 20 alone, at least 30 people were buried. But “during Eid (Muslim holiday April 21-23), many corpses were found”.
The deceased are buried following taking their DNA and assigning a number to each body to facilitate their possible identification by relatives, he said. Mr. Masmoudi mentioned important “difficulties” to find them a burial place, while noting “concerted efforts to bury them in the municipal cemeteries of Sfax”.
Since the beginning of the year, “As of April 24, more than 220 dead and missing have been counted, the majority from sub-Saharan Africa”, Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), an NGO specializing in migration, told AFP.
According to the FTDES, “more than 78% of departures took place from the coasts of Sfax and Mahdia”. Mr. Ben Amor recalls that the local authorities made a commitment last year “to create a special cemetery for migrants, on the grounds that they are not Muslims”, but that it is not yet ready, hence the problems in finding space for them.
The departure of African migrants from Tunisia intensified following a speech on February 21 by President Kais Saied condemning illegal immigration and presenting it as a demographic threat to his country. Tunisia, some of whose coasts are less than 150 km from Italy, is going through a serious politico-economic crisis which is also pushing many Tunisians to try to reach Europe illegally by sea at the risk of their lives.
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