AS the number of migrants trying to reach Europe grows so does the number of deaths in the Mediterranean.
While European Union officials struggle to contain the exodus the plight of those fleeing poverty and persecution is leaving its tragic mark on the shores of Tunisia.
As the sun creeps above the horizon off the shores of its eastern coast, fisherman Oussama Dabbebi begins hauling in his nets. His face fixes anxiously on its contents, because sometimes fish are not all he finds.
“Instead of getting fish I sometimes get dead bodies. The first time I was afraid, then step by step I got used to it. After a while getting a dead body out of my net is like getting a fish.”
The 30-year-old fisherman, clad in a dark hooded sweat short and shorts, says he recently found the bodies of 15 migrants in his nets over a three-day period.
“Once I found a baby’s body. How is a baby responsible for anything? I was crying. For adults it’s different because they have lived. But you know, for the baby, it didn’t see anything.”
Mr Dabbebi has fished these waters near Tunisia’s second city of Sfax since he was 10 years old.
In those days he was one of many casting their nets, but now he says most fisherman have sold their boats for vast sums to people smugglers.
“Many times smugglers have offered me unbelievable amounts to sell my boat. I have always refused because if they used my boat and someone drowned, I would never forgive myself.”
A short distance away a group of migrants from South Sudan – which has been hit by conflict, climate shock and food insecurity since its independence in 2011 – are walking slowly away from the port.
All ultimately hope to reach the UK. One explains that they have reluctantly abandoned a second attempt to cross to Italy because of an overcrowded boat and worsening weather.
“There were so many people and the boat was very small. We were still going to go, but when we pushed away from the shore it was really windy. There was too much wind.”
According Tunisia’s National Guard 13,000 migrants were forced from their often overcrowded boats near Sfax and returned to shore in the first three months of this year.
Between January and April this year some 24,000 people left the Tunisian coast in makeshift boats and made it to Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.
