As many as 37 Bangladesh nationals were among 71 migrants who are rescued by Tunisian authorities from a sinking boat in the Mediterranean Sea.
Rescuers brought to shore all 71 passengers, including 37 citizens from Bangladesh, eight Moroccans, eight Egyptians, seven Algerian, four Sudanese, two Chadians and a Tunisia, an international news agency quoted Tunisian National Guard spokesperson Houcem Eddine Jebali as saying on Tuesday (Jul 9).
According to Jebali, the rescue operation was conducted on Monday night and all of them are safe and sound.
The boat, carrying the migrants, had set off from the Libyan town of Zuwara, west of Tripoli, and started to leak as it approached Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands, said the spokesperson.
The Monday’s rescue operation took place just days after a boat taking the same route across the Mediterranean sank with over 80 people on board.
According to a survivor, as many as 86 people had been on board the ill-fated boat that took off from Zuwara last week.
The boat tipped over only hours after setting out to sea.
"People were terrified as water started pouring in, some of them fell into the water. They stayed down there," survivor Soleiman Coulibaly, who hails from Milan, told the news agency.
Tunisian authorities have so far retrieved 16 bodies from that tragedy, including those of a pregnant woman and a toddler.
In recent years, Libya has become a major departure point for migrants to reach Europe across the Mediterranean.