The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest for people attempting to cross the central Mediterranean since 2017, according to the UN, with an increasing number of boats carrying asylum seekers wrecked at sea. Bodies, including those of children and pregnant women, often turn up on the beaches of Tunisia, where they are collected and buried. Last year, according to the Tunisian Red Crescent, more than 800 bodies were recovered in the Sfax region alone, and more than 300 have been found since the beginning of 2023. As a result, funerals are held almost every day to reduce the pressure on hospitals, local morgues have exceeded their capacity, and burial space in many municipal cemeteries to bury refugees, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, is running out.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN