Over 200 Bodies Wash Up on Beaches – Coast Guard Working to Recover and Identify the Corpses

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Tunisia’s coast guard says it has recovered around 210 bodies of migrants in less than two weeks that have washed up on the North African country’s central coastline amid an ongoing increase in migration.

Preliminary examinations of the bodies indicated that the migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, according to the National Guard’s Houssemeddine Jebabli.

The number of bodies recovered was announced Friday.

Of the 210 dead migrants found over 10 days starting on April 18, about 70 of those were recovered from the beaches of eastern Sfax, the neighboring Kerkennah Islands and Mahdia, according to prosecutor Faouzi Masmoudi, who oversees migration issues.

These three areas are starting points for most attempts to migrate to the Italian coast, including onward to the remote island of Lampedusa, he added.

The increasing number of dead migrants has overwhelmed the Habib Bourguiba Hospital morgue in Sfax, the capacity of which is 30 to 40 bodies.

To ease the pressure on hospitals, local authorities are working to speed up the burial of the victims after carrying out DNA tests and possible identification by relatives, Masmoudi said.

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