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Death Toll in Tunisian Migrant Shipwreck Rises, Search Ongoing

Migrants are seen during rescue operation in the Mediterranea Sea October 20, 2016. Yara Nardi/Italian Red Cross press office/Handout via Reuters
Migrants are seen during rescue operation in the Mediterranea Sea October 20, 2016. Yara Nardi/Italian Red Cross press office/Handout via Reuters
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Death Toll in Tunisian Migrant Shipwreck Rises, Search Ongoing

Migrants are seen during rescue operation in the Mediterranea Sea October 20, 2016. Yara Nardi/Italian Red Cross press office/Handout via Reuters
Migrants are seen during rescue operation in the Mediterranea Sea October 20, 2016. Yara Nardi/Italian Red Cross press office/Handout via Reuters

The death toll in a migrant shipwreck off Tunisia's coast has climbed to 54 people as more and more bodies are discovered, and the search is continuing.

Tunisian search teams recovered the bodies of 13 men and women Thursday, according to the Defense Ministry. Earlier in the week, the bodies of two toddlers and 20 adults washed up on the beaches of Kerkennah Island off the Mediterranean coastal city of Sfax, and 19 other bodies were found floating in nearby waters.

Navy units and divers from the civil protection services are continuing to search the area for other possible victims, the health director for the Sfax region, Ali Ayadi, told The Associated Press.

Many of the victims were buried in Sfax on Wednesday, Ayadi said. All the victims are from sub-Saharan Africa, notably Ivory Coast, except for the Tunisian captain, according to Tunisian authorities.

The UN refugee agency says attempts to leave Tunisia for the Italian coast increased by more than 150 percent from January through April compared with the same period last year.

Tunisia's National Guard said last week that 140 migrants have been arrested recently trying to cross illegally. Most were sub-Saharan Africans fleeing tensions in Libya.

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Sudan Rejects UN Call for 'Impartial' Force to Protect Civilians

Smoke rises in Omdurman, near Halfaya Bridge, during clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and the army as seen from Khartoum North, Sudan April 15, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah
Smoke rises in Omdurman, near Halfaya Bridge, during clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and the army as seen from Khartoum North, Sudan April 15, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah
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Sudan Rejects UN Call for 'Impartial' Force to Protect Civilians

Smoke rises in Omdurman, near Halfaya Bridge, during clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and the army as seen from Khartoum North, Sudan April 15, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah
Smoke rises in Omdurman, near Halfaya Bridge, during clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and the army as seen from Khartoum North, Sudan April 15, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an "independent and impartial force" to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.

The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against Rapid Support Forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered "harrowing" violations by both sides, "which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

They called for "an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians" to be deployed "without delay".

The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that "the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission."

It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, "a political and illegal body", and the panel's recommendations "a flagrant violation of their mandate".

According to AFP, the UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighboring countries.

More than 25 million people -- upwards of half the country's population -- face acute food shortages.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said: "The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing."

In Port Sudan, where government offices and the United Nations have relocated to due to the intense fighting in the capital Khartoum, Tedros called on the "world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through".

The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan's former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, of "systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions".

"The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government," it said.

The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council's role should be "to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism".

It also rejected the experts' call for an arms embargo.