TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Six migrants, including four children, have died of thirst in Tunisia’s part of the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria, the governor of Tunisia’s Tozeur region said Thursday.
The migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died amid the heat wave currently baking Tunisia and the entire Mediterannean region, Aymen Béjaoui told a local radio station.
In Tunisia temperatures on Wednesday reached a record high of 50 C (122 F), according to the national weather service.
Tunisian authorities have said recently that they are seeing an increase in migrants from African countries trying to cross the border from Algeria to Tunisia with the aim of reaching Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.
In recent weeks, Tunisian fishermen and naval authorities have retrieved scores of bodies of drowned migrants and rescued hundreds of others after multiple boats sank while trying to reach Europe.
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