Eight Tunisian migrants have died and 12 have gone missing when a ship smuggled them from the Tunisian coast to Italy sank, a Tunisian security official told AFP.

The official, who asked not to be named, said 17 other migrants on the same boat were rescued.

He added, citing survivors’ testimonies, that a total of 37 migrants, all Tunisians, boarded the boat in an attempt to illegally reach the Italian coast from the Sfax region.

The source confirmed that the search work carried out by the naval units of the National Guard to search for the missing migrants continues.

With the improvement of weather conditions, the number of attempts of illegal migration from the Tunisian and Libyan coast towards the Italian one is increasing.

In the first seven months of this year, 34,000 people clandestinely arrived in Italy by sea, compared with 25,500 during the same period in 2021, according to statistics from the Italian Interior Ministry.