According to several Western media, notably French, a boat carrying migrants sank on June 22 off the Italian island of Lampedusa. The death toll is said to be "around forty". The boat, which set sail from Sfax in Tunisia, was carrying 46 people from sub-Saharan African countries, including Cameroon, according to the same sources. No details were given, however, on the nationalities of the deceased.

Chiara Cardoletti, the spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Italy simply told AFP that an infant and seven women were among the victims. In a tweet, Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the Mediterranean Coordination Office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), spoke of 40 people missing at sea as a result of the shipwreck. "We urgently need to step up rescue efforts on the Tunisian route: the fragile iron boats on which migrants fleeing the country are forced to travel are claiming an unacceptable number of lives this year," he writes. The IOM official told AFP that the boat was carrying migrants from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.

The Tunisian city of Sfax is the departure point for a large number of illegal crossings by migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan African countries, to Italy. According to corroborating sources, departures intensified after the controversial comments made on February 21 by the Tunisian President, Kaïs Saïed, on the presence of sub-Saharan migrants said to be responsible for insecurity in the country.  In early June, more than 200 Cameroonian migrants were rescued off the Tunisian coast after their boats sank.

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