“The number of corpses exceeds its capacity,” said the official spokesman for the Sfax court, explaining that last Tuesday the number exceeded “two hundred bodies, while the capacity of the hospital (Habib Bourguiba) does not exceed forty or fifty in the most extreme cases.”
A judicial spokesman told AFP that a central hospital in the Sfax governorate in eastern Tunisia is no longer able to accommodate the bodies of irregular migrants who died on crossing journeys towards the Italian coast.
“The number of corpses exceeds the absorption capacity,” said the official spokesman for the Sfax court, Fawzi Al-Masmoudi, explaining that the number exceeded last Tuesday, “two hundred bodies, while the capacity of the hospital (Habib Bourguiba) does not exceed forty or fifty in the most extreme cases, and this is what created a health problem.” .
Sfax is one of the areas where Tunisian immigrants and from sub-Saharan African countries head out mainly towards the European and Italian coasts.
A week ago, the local authorities in the governorate buried 30 bodies, and these operations continue on an almost daily basis, “to reduce pressure on the hospital,” according to Al-Masmoudi.
The health and municipal authorities are working to bury them in cemeteries after conducting DNA analyzes and documenting them with numbers, because “there is a problem today, which is the floating of corpses in large numbers and their arrival at the beach, and we do not know their identity or any drowning incidents that follow, and the number is increasing.”
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, an organization that follows up the immigration file in Tunisia, counted no less than 220 dead and missing victims from the beginning of this year until April 24.
The governorates of Sfax and Mahdia witness more than 78 percent of the migrant departures.
“Every year, the forms of dealing with corpses are raised,” Ramadan bin Omar, a spokesman for the forum, told AFP.
He said, “The local authorities have pledged to allocate a cemetery for the corpses of immigrants since last year, but this has not been done,” because “they are always looking for a solution represented in allocating a cemetery for the corpses of immigrants, under the pretext that they are not Muslims.”
The Tunisian National Guard had announced earlier that it had rescued or intercepted “14,406 people, including 13,138 people from sub-Saharan Africa, and the rest Tunisians,” during the first three months of the year.
Tunisia, which has parts of its coast less than 150 kilometers from the Italian island of Lampedusa, regularly records attempts by immigrants, most of them from sub-Saharan African countries, to leave illegally towards the Italian coast.
The pace of immigration attempts, which often end in accidents and the tragedy of drowning, increased, following a speech in which Tunisian President Kais Saied strongly criticized the phenomenon of illegal immigration and the influx of immigrants, mostly from countries in sub-Saharan Africa, to his country.
