Hespress FRTuesday May 7, 2024 – 02:54
The Tunisian authorities announced that they had foiled 22 attempts at illegal immigration in Sfax (south-east), a hub for illegal crossings to Europe from the coast of Tunisia.
In a press release, the Tunisian National Guard specifies having foiled 22 migration attempts over the last weekend off the coast of Sfax and the center of the country, which was crowned by the rescue of a significant number of candidates for illegal emigration.
At the end of their interventions, the national guard units arrested 10 wanted smugglers and seized equipment used in these clandestine operations, the press release added.
Tunisia, some stretches of coastline of which are less than 150 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa, has recently seen an increase in attempts by migrants to leave for Italy, particularly from the city of Sfax, considered as the epicenter of clandestine crossing attempts.
According to the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, an NGO specializing in the migration issue, more than 1,300 irregular migrants of different nationalities died and 1,793 others went missing off the Tunisian coast during 2023. , while they were trying to reach Europe clandestinely.
