The Tunisian National Guard said on Tuesday that about 40 Tunisian migrants were missing after sailing in a boat toward the coast of Italy last week.
Tunisia is suffering from a migration crisis and has replaced Libya to become a major starting point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East in the hope of finding a better life in Europe.
Video footage published by the National Guard showed Coast Guard ships supported by aircraft searching for the missing people.
As of December 2023, the Tunisian National Guard counted about 70,000 migrants as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, a toll more than double that recorded in the same period of the previous year.
Over the course of 11 months, the Tunisian National Guard intercepted 69,963 migrants, compared to 31,297 people during the same period in 2022, according to statistics from Guard spokesman Houssam Eddine Jebali.