Tunisia's coastguard on Thursday retrieved the bodies of 20
Five other
The rescue effort took place off the port of Sfax in central Tunisia, Zekri said, adding that those on board came from sub-Saharan Africa, without giving further details.
More than 40 people were on board the makeshift boat, said Mourad Turki, a front man for the Sfax court.
Thirteen of the 20 bodies recovered were women, Turki added.
Khaled Hayouni, a front man for the interior ministry, said the boat was heading to Italia when it sank.
He said that some of the bodies had been taken to a Sfax hospital for autopsies to determine the cause of death.
Tunisian fishermen, who were nearby after the sinking, said that children were also on board the boat and are still missing, said Turki.
Tunisia is just a few hundred kilometres (miles) from mainland Europe, and has long been a launchpad for illegal migration to the continent.
Departures by desperate
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...peaked in 2011, following the revolution that overthrew Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Although numbers have dropped significantly in recent years, illegal crossings from Tunisia to Europe jumped by more than 150 percent in January to April compared to the same period last year, according to the United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
refugee agency.
Many of the
According to the interior ministry, 8,581
Of those, 2,014 were non-Tunisians.
Earlier this month, the Tunisian navy said it had intercepted 93