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| At least 52 people died after a boat carrying around 180 refugees and migrants sank off the coast of Tunisia on Saturday. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is deeply saddened at this latest tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea and is concerned about the high number of people dying on the Central Mediterranean route with over 700 dead or missing so far in 2018. —UNHCR, June 5, 2018; Meanwhile, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini (in photo) says he will stop migrants trying to reach Europe via Sicily. – EPA pic, June 4, 2018. |
"Can I escape from fell Charybdis and ward Scylla off?"
—Homer, Odyssey, Book 12, Lines 115, Odysseus to Circe
At Sfax, the news was horrible—five dozen dead—and more,
near to Kerkennah Island off of north Tunisia's shore.
Increasingly the human traffickers launch people from
Tunisia, now that Libya is tighter than a drum.
The boat was packed with migrants fleeing Africa to be
free from the lives they do not like for hope in Italy.
But, o, alas, the relatives of those who learned the worst,
their souls, like Dido's when Aeneas left her, are accursed.
But further off, up north, Salvini said at Sicily,
"We will no longer be the camp for Europe's refugees."
