According to a national guard commander on Friday, the number of migrants killed in shipwrecks off the coast of Tunisia has grown to 210. Coastguards retrieved 41 bodies from Tunisian waters.
According to Houssem Eddine Jebabli, the remains were in bad shape, suggesting that they had been in the water for a long time.
He said that never before had such a large number of individuals perished in such a short period of time.
The number of boats carrying migrants, largely from Sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, and Sudan, aiming to reach Italy from Tunisia has surged significantly in recent months, owing in part to a crackdown on departures by authorities in neighboring Libya.
Because of the inflow of persons who need to be buried, several morgues in Tunisia have run out of room for corpses.
