Immigrants go down off Tunisia

2004-10-04 12:34

Tunis - Seventeen would-be immigrants drowned and 47 were missing after a boat that was to have carried them across the Mediterranean broke up and sank off the Tunisian coast at the weekend, the Tunisian navy and witnesses said on Monday.

The boat, which was carrying 75 people, sank overnight in the early hours of Sunday, the navy said, in a statement carried by the official TAP news agency. The vessel was attempting to sail to Italy.

Witnesses said the boat broke in two about an hour after it had sailed overnight from a beach in Sousse province, on the country's eastern coast. The navy said a helicopter, a launch and a ship were sent out to try and find survivors.

Eleven of the occupants were either pulled alive from the water by the navy or managed to swim to shore. Seventeen were known to have drowned and the remaining 47 were missing, the statement said.

It added that five of the occupants were Tunisian and the remaining 70 Moroccan. Of the 11 survivors, 10 were Moroccans and one a Tunisian.

Meanwhile the weekly Tunis Hebdo newspaper said the people in the boat were part of a group of some 280 who had gathered with the intention of trying to reach Europe.

The paper said that after the sinking of the boat most of the others - about 200 in all - were arrested in the region around the town of Nabeul, some 50km south of the capital Tunis.

Tunis Hebdo said the non-Tunisians in the group had entered the country legally.

The beach from where the boat sailed was some 120km south of Tunis, between the coastal towns of Hergla and El Kantaoui.

- AFP