60 migrants drown off Tunisia: Red Crescent

TUNIS: Around 60 migrants most of them from Bangladesh have died after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea after it left Libya for Italy, the Tunisian Red Crescent said on Saturday.

Survivors told the Red Crescent the tragedy unfolded after some 75 people who had left Zuwara on the northwestern Libyan coast late Thursday on a large boat were transferred to a smaller one that sank off Tunisia.

"The migrants were transferred into a smaller inflatable boat which was overloaded, and 10 minutes later it sank," Mongi Slim, a Red Crescent official in the southern Tunisian town of Zarzis, told AFP. Tunisian fishermen rescued 16 people and brought them to shore in Zarzis.

The survivors said they spent eight hours trapped in the cold sea before they were spotted by the fishermen who alerted the Tunisian coastguard, Slim said. The bodies of three people were plucked out of the waters on Friday, the Tunisian defence ministry said.