KERKENNEH - At least 39 people have died, including four young children, after a ship carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Tunisia. The Tunisian Defence Ministry report that 165 people were also saved. A search is underway for any more bodies or possible survivors.

  The ship had set off from Sfax in Tunisia and capsized on Monday night off the island of Kerkenneh, where they were saved by two rescue ships. According to a spokesperson for the Tunisian National Guard, Houcem Eddine Jehabli, the majority of migrants had come from Subsaharan Africa and were attempting to reach Europe.

  This route, through the central Mediterranean, is the most dangerous migrant route in the world, with thousands dying every year. According to numbers provided by UNCHR, the UN’s refugee agency, since the beginning of the year, 94 ships have been intercepted and 1,736 people were stopped before taking to the sea.

  On Feb. 21, a ship arrived in Italy carrying 3,800 migrants from Tunisia and Libya, and on Monday evening, the Spanish Coast Guard rescued 50 people around 250 kilometres from Gran Canaria.

  “EU States must urgently change their migrant policies in the Mediterranean,” said the European Council’s commissioner for human rights Dunja Mijatovic, “because the current ones put in danger both lives and respect for the rights of refugees and migrants.”

  “Despite a few small forward steps, the situation in respect to human rights in the Mediterranean remains deplorable. Shipwrecks continue to reoccur,” while “the increasing naval disengagement of Mediterranean countries, the increasing obstruction caused by the rescue activities of NGOs, to which is added the decisions to slow the disembarkations and not allocate a safe port, has all undermined the integrity of the search and rescue system.”

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