Bangladeshis are among the migrants drowned when the boat carrying them sank on Friday in the Mediterranean Sea off the Tunisian coast after they had left Libya for Europe, according to media reports.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said at least 65 migrants drowned while Tunisia’s state-run Tunis Afrique Presse agency gave a death toll of at least 70 people.
Quoting a Tunisia-based official of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), an international news agency reported the survivors of the sinking, which include people from Bangladesh and Morocco among other nationalities, are now being questioned and cared for by Tunisian authorities.
"This is a tragic and terrible reminder of the risks still faced by those who attempt to cross the Mediterranean," UNHCR Special Envoy for the Mediterranean Vincent Cochetel said in a statement, reports Reuters.
In the first four months of 2019, 164 people are known to have died on the route, a smaller number but higher death rate than in previous years, with one dying for every three who reach European shores, UNHCR said.
UNHCR said the sunken boat had taken to the sea on Thursday from neighbouring Libya, where renewed warfare between rival factions has gripped the capital Tripoli in the past five weeks.
The Tunisian navy brought 16 survivors to the coast at Zarzis, where one was immediately taken to hospital and the others awaited permission to disembark, UNHCR said.
The Tunisian agency said the boat had sunk 40 miles off the coast of Sfax, south of the capital Tunis and that fishing boats had rescued the survivors, according to the Reuters report.
Tunisia's defence ministry said in a statement the boat had left from the Libyan port of Zouara aiming to reach Italy. Navy units have recovered only three bodies so far.
Libya's west coast is a main departure point for African migrants hoping to reach Europe by paying human traffickers, though numbers have dropped due to an Italian-led effort to disrupt smuggling networks and support the Libyan coast guard.
According to IOM, 2,297 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean last year out of a total of 116,959 people who reached Europe by sea.
Some 117 migrants who left Libya in a rubber dinghy in January went missing and most remain unaccounted for, according to the UN agency.