Several hundred African migrants and asylum seekers, including children, are stranded in a remote, militarized buffer zone at the Tunisia-Libya border, where they have been denied assistance or legal protection.
In this arid landscape, a humanitarian crisis is fast unfolding, as these people, fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries, including Sudan, have found themselves trapped in limbo, unable to enter Libya or return to Tunisia.
Videos posted online in recent days show hundreds of stranded adults and children without access to food, water, shelter, or medical assistance, as UN agencies have been denied access to the site to distribute aid.
Many of the migrants were apprehended in police raids in Tunisia’s port city of Sfax, southeast of the capital Tunis, and transported by the national guard and military over a distance of 300 kilometers to Ben Guerdane, and subsequently taken to the border with Libya.—AN
