Three children and one woman died and 21 people were rescued after their migrant ship sank off the Tunisian city of Sfax, Faouzi Masmoudi, a judge in Sfax, told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said all the migrants were Tunisians.
Tunisia has become a major departure point for migrant boats heading across the Mediterranean Sea towards Italy.
The Italian Red Cross sounded the alarm Wednesday about humanitarian conditions on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after more than 5,000 people in more than 100 different migrant boats arrived in one day with smugglers in north Africa taking advantage of calm seas to set off.
At least one baby died near shore as a boat capsized, state radio said.
Dozens of new arrivals crouched on the rocky jetties of Lampedusa’s port, while others sheltered in the shade of a nearby camping ground as the island’s lone migrant welcome center, which has a capacity of around 400, overflowed with more than 6,000 people.
“Days ago, there were more than 4,000 people and we were talking about a record, today we are talking about a record of landings,” the Red Cross' national director Rosario Valastro said in a social media post. The issue isn't a competition about records, he said, but about finding solutions to an emergency.
The Red Cross urged the Italian government to quickly transfer the migrants to the mainland, saying their personnel had managed to keep the situation under control but that the disembarkation from more than 100 boats was pushing the limit. Medical personnel were focusing attention on the most fragile, but the group warned that maintaining adequate humanitarian conditions was dependent on keeping the numbers below a critical threshold.
State-run RAI radio said a five-month-old baby drowned during a boat capsizing off Lampedusa early Wednesday; the other 46 passengers including the mother were rescued by a nearby Italian coast guard ship.
