Brussels: Europe and the Arabs agencies
On the Italian island of Lampedusa, port guards found the bodies of drowned immigrants who had been trying for days with rubber boats to reach the port.
Noureddine Al-Omrani from the Netherlands wrote: "Local sources say that the shipwrecked died from the severity of cold and hunger. The number of victims reached more than ten, including an infant, while about 42 candidates for "secret" immigration were rescued. Official Italian sources say that the number of immigrants who They were able to enter the Italian port, which exceeded 5,000 compared to last year, as the number of candidates for “secret” immigration reached about 3,000 people.
According to media reports, 12 migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean, according to the Italian authorities and a non-governmental organization, on Friday.
On Thursday evening, the Italian Coast Guard recovered the bodies of 8 migrants, 5 men and 3 women, one of whom was pregnant, on board a boat during this journey through the central Mediterranean, which is considered the most dangerous in the world.
The 42 survivors who were transferred to the small Italian island of Lampedusa reported the death of “a man and a child who fell into the sea during the trip,” according to what the Coast Guard said in a statement, while the Italian agency ANSA reported that the child was a 4-month-old baby whose mother threw his body into the sea, and that the man He jumped into the water to rescue her and drowned.
"I can no longer count the dead ... I have been mayor for 6 months and so far I have received at least forty dead, this is not normal, and almost every week we recover bodies," said the mayor of Lampedusa, Filippo Manino, to "Agence France Presse" on Friday.
The 20-square-kilometer Lampedusa island is located about a hundred kilometers east of the Tunisian coast in the heart of the Mediterranean, and represents the first gateway to Europe for migrants from North Africa.
For its part, the Tunisian authorities announced the thwarting of illegal immigration attempts across the land and sea borders.

The official spokesman for the General Administration of the Tunisian National Guard stated - in a statement, yesterday, Friday, that in the framework of addressing the phenomenon of surreptitiously crossing the land border, the National Guard units operating in the regions of Ghar El Dama, Qalaat El Khasba, Bouchabaka and Feriana arrested 39 people of sub-Saharan African nationalities, including them. Tunisian girl, after they deliberately crossed the Algerian-Tunisian border surreptitiously.

He added that the National Guard units operating in the Chebba-Mahdia and Jebeniana regions managed to arrest 6 people, including two of sub-Saharan nationalities and the rest of them Tunisians, after they were preparing to sail surreptitiously towards Italy.

The Public Prosecution ordered the necessary measures to be taken against them.