The Coast Guard believes that the child is Cameroonian, as more than 200 immigrants from this country were rescued off Sfax in the last two days after their boats sank.
On Friday, the Tunisian Coast Guard recovered the body of a child off the eastern coast of the country, following the sinking of a migrant boat, according to a photographer cooperating with AFP.
The video clip, which was taken by the photographer, showed a cohesive body of a child floating on the surface of the water, wearing blue shoes and a predominantly pink winter dress. It was recovered off the coasts of Sfax and Kerkennah Island (center-east).
The Coast Guard believed that the child was Cameroonian, as more than 200 immigrants from this country were rescued off Sfax in the last two days after their boats sank. The mother of the child is still missing according to the same source.
In contact with Agence France-Presse, the Cameroonian embassy in Tunisia was unable to confirm this information.
A spokesman for the Sfax court, Fawzi Al-Masmoudi, said that two boats carrying illegal immigrants of sub-Saharan African nationalities sank on Wednesday off the coast of Sfax.
The sinking of the first boat left six dead, while 39 immigrants were rescued, according to Al-Masmoudi, and 12 passengers who were on the second boat were rescued, while 41 others were missing.
Al-Masmoudi was unable to determine whether the child was on board one of these two boats.
The province of Sfax includes the second largest Tunisian city and is the starting point for a large number of illegal crossings of illegal immigrants towards the Italian coasts.
Some Tunisian coasts are less than 150 km from the Italian island of Lampedusa, and attempts at illegal immigration are regularly recorded.
Attempts to cross African migrants from Tunisia intensified after statements by President Kais Saied on February 21, in which he criticized illegal immigration and considered it a demographic threat to his country.
Tunisia is going through a serious political and economic crisis that is also driving many Tunisians to try to reach Europe illegally by sea. On May 25, the Tunisian National Guard announced the arrest of an organizer of illegal immigration operations.
