Tunisia allows boat with migrants to dock after two weeks

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Tunisia has agreed to accept a boat that has been stranded for two weeks with around 40 African migrants off the country's coast, the Red Crescent said on Tuesday.

Monji Slim, an official of the Tunisian Red Crescent, said the boat will arrive in the southern port of Zarzis on Wednesday morning.

Among the migrants are two pregnant women, he said, adding that aid and food had already been delivered to the vessel.

The North African country had first argued Malta or Italy should accept the migrants, according to the Red Crescent.

Boats are seen at a harbor in the southern island of Kerkenna, where migrants departed from last week before their boat sank, June 4, 2018. /VCG Photo

It was not clear where the migrants had set off from before they were rescued by the Tunisian vessel.

The new Italian government has closed its ports to charity ships operating in the Mediterranean, saying the European Union must share the burden of accepting the hundreds of migrants who are plucked from waters each month, mostly off the Libyan coast.

Rome called last month for migrant centers to be set up in Africa to stop a tide of asylum-seekers fleeing toward western Europe. Tunisia has rejected this proposal.

At least 80 migrants died when their boat sank off the Tunisian coast in June, one of the worst migrant boat accidents in the North African country of recent years.

Human traffickers are increasingly using Tunisia as a launch pad for migrants heading to Europe but the Libyan coast guard, aided by armed groups, has tightened controls.

Source(s): Reuters