A health official in Tunisia’s Sfax province has warned that the number of bodies recovered from shipwrecks in recent days has surpassed the capacity of the local medical system.
The regional director of health, Hatem Cherif, was quoted by state news agency TAP as saying that the morgue of Habib Bourguiba University Hospital in the provincial capital had received 42 bodies of migrants, despite the fact that the morgue could only handle 35 bodies.
The bodies were recovered from the sea after their boats capsized off the coast of the province recently.
Mr. Cherif was quoted as saying that the morgue received 70 bodies last week and that as summer approaches, the pace of illegal migration attempts by sea will accelerate, as will the decomposition of bodies due to rising temperatures.
The official requested refrigerated containers and lorries from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to transport bodies to the hospital.
TAP reported that over 800 bodies of Sub-Saharan Africans who died at sea had been buried in Sfax cemeteries between 2022 and this year.
Undocumented migrants’ attempts to cross the Mediterranean to Italy have increased in recent weeks.
Domestic media reported on Sunday that at least 29 migrants died during attempted sea crossings from Sfax.
The incidents occurred in the midst of a campaign of arrests of Sub-Saharan Africans living in the country, as well as President Kais Saied’s recent anti-migrant narrative.
