Rescuers pull migrants from deadly shipwreck off Tunisian Coast

At least two people, one of them a child, died and six went missing after a dramatic shipwreck off the Tunisian coast, near the Gulf of Gabes, according to the European non-profit humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch on Tuesday.

The European Civil Society rescue ship Aurora, run by Sea-Watch, in the early morning of Tuesday located a deflated rubber dinghy, with five survivors and two bodies on board.

The other 23 survivors, among them a toddler and five women managed to escape the shipwreck by reaching the Hasdrubal gas platform, 100 km (62 miles) from the Tunisian coast.

According to the survivors, whose testimony was gathered by Sea-Watch rescuers, at least six people went missing, three children from one family among them.

According to the rescuers it is still unclear if the body of the child that was recovered belongs to one of the three missing children.

The rescue crew reached the deflated dinghy at around 4 a.m. and handed out life jackets and brought people on board. The migrants and refugees were from Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Aurora has been assigned the port of the Italian island of Lampedusa for disembarkation, where it is expected to arrive Tuesday afternoon.

It is unclear when the migrants' boat departed and whether it set sail from Tunisia or Libya.

According to the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration 21,897 people have crossed the central Mediterranean Sea, mainly from Libya and Tunisia to Italy, and 997 died from the beginning 1st 2026.

Although the number of arrivals in the same period in 2025 was more than double, with 49,000 people arriving by sea, the mortality rate was slightly lower last year, with 855 migrants dying while attempting to reach Europe crossing the central Mediterranean sea, according to IOM.