In the south of Tunisia, fishermen regularly rescue boats full of migrants that are in distress. For them, coming across an overloaded boat has become part of their daily "routine", just like finding dead bodies floating in the water.
Four Tunisian mothers have been brought to the city of Agrigento in Sicily to identify the bodies of their children. They died when their boat sank off Lampedusa on October 7. The women were called up as part of a probe into the incident. Only two of the four mothers were able to identify the bodies of their children.
The film "Strange Fish", playing in this year's Global Migration Film Festival, tells the story of a group of fishermen in Zarzis, southern Tunisia, and how their lives have been affected by the migration which criss-crosses the waters in which they fish. InfoMigrants spoke to the film's director Giulia Bertoluzzi and one of the anonymous heroes, fisherman Chamseddine Bourassine.
A boat packed with over 100 migrants is feared to have sunk off the Libyan coast. A local fisherman contacted the distress hotline Alarmphone and said he rescued 3 people and saw many dead bodies in the water.
Last week, the Sicilian motorized fishing boat Accursio Giarratano put its fishing activities on hold to rescue a dinghy overloaded with migrants and in distress at sea. Gaspare Giarratano, the owner of the boat, said that he rescued the migrants as a way of paying homage to his dead son.
A Tunisian fisherman cleared last year of 'aiding illegal migrants' has rescued another group of migrants from waters between Libya and Italy. Chamseddine Bourassine and his crew ferried 69 people back to shore in Tunisia on May 11, a day after it was confirmed that around 60 more migrants had drowned in the same region.