As the desperate bid to enter Europe crossing the Mediterranean Sea continues, 81 migrants – 32 of them Bangladeshis – have been rescued off Tunisia's northeastern coast.
According to Brac, more than 9,000 Bangladeshis braved the perilous journey through the sea from January last year to this April.
“At least 500 Bangladeshi migrants are rescued from the route every year,” Shariful Hasan, head of Brac Migration Programme, told the newspaper.
The Tunisian navy on Saturday confirmed the latest rescue operation, saying the migrants including a woman were en route to Europe from Libya on a barely seaworthy vessel.
The boat, which had been damaged, was boarded around six kilometres off Tunisia's northeastern coast, the navy said.
Other than the Bangladeshis, it also carried 38 Egyptians, 10 Sudanese and a Moroccan, all aged between 20 and 38, who had set off from the coastal village of Abu Kammash, close to Libya's border with Tunisia.
They were handed over to the national guard for processing.
Tunisia and neighbouring Libya are key departure points for migrants seeking to reach European shores, often in poorly-maintained vessels.
The Italian island of Lampedusa is only about 130 kilometres from the Tunisian coast.
Last month, Libyan authorities arrested 542 would-be migrants preparing to depart for Europe in inflatable boats, a security source said.
An AFP photographer said most were originally from Bangladesh.
The International Organization for Migration has said that nearly 2,000 migrants drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021, compared to 1,401 the previous year.
It is the world's deadliest migration route, but people hoping to build a better life in Europe increasingly risk it.
Hundreds of thousands of people have made the perilous Mediterranean crossing in recent years, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East
More than 3,000 people – many of them Bangladeshis -- died or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean and the Atlantic last year, hoping to reach Europe, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
Fatalities for 2020, stood at 1,776 on the routes.
Rise in Bangladeshi arrivals
Arrivals in Italy, one of the main migrant routes into Europe, had been falling in recent years, but numbers picked up again in 2021.
A report by The Telegraph in August last year suggested more Bangladeshis arrived in Europe in the first seven months of 2021 than any other nationality.
Between January and June last year, over 3,300 Bangladeshis had crossed the Mediterranean, mostly travelling via Libya, surpassing any other nationality for the first time since the UNHCR began documenting arrivals in 2015.
By 2021, Bangladeshis constituted the sixth-largest group of migrants worldwide, forming one of the largest populations by nationality in the UK, Italy and Greece.
As many as 65,000 people, aged between 25 and 60, entered Europe illegally from Bangladesh in the past 12 years till 2021, among which 40,000 crossed the Mediterranean Sea in risky voyages, says Brac.
