Tunisia, Syria, Colombia.

Today's three stories you should know.

Mar 30, 2023

Tunisia

According to Tunisia’s state news agency TAP, a morgue in the city of Sfax has run out of space for bodies of people from sub-Saharan Africa recovered from shipwrecks off the coast. An official said the morgue currently has 42 bodies and only has the capacity for 35. Hatem Cherif, director of health services in Sfax, said the morgue housed 70 bodies last week and appealed to the UN’s International Organization for Migration to provide refrigerated containers and refrigerated trucks to transport bodies to hospital. There has been a significant spike in the number of people trying to cross the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Europe in recent weeks. This is normal as summer approaches and the seas calm but a spate of attacks on sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia after a racist speech from the president has also hastened departures.

Syria

The Israeli army has carried out missile attacks on the Syrian capital Damascus, the ministry of defence and state media said. The state news agency said the Syrian military had shot down some of the missiles and that at least two soldiers had been wounded. Israel is believed to have carried out hundreds of attacks inside Syria since the civil war began, which it says are aimed at Iran-linked groups in the country, but it rarely acknowledges them. After more than a decade of war, the forces of President Bashar al-Assad are back in control of most of the Syria, largely due to the support of Iranian and Russian forces. Nearly half a million people have been killed.

Colombia

Here’s a weird one. Colombia is going to spend $3.5 million to move 70 hippos once owned by drug lord Pablo Escobar to overseas sanctuaries. The infamous cocaine baron illegally imported a number of hippos in the late 1980s but, after he was shot dead by police in 1993, the animals were left to roam in a marshy area near his former home. They have become something of a tourist attraction but authorities have struggled to control the size of the population which, at 150, is now believed to be the biggest herd outside Africa. Ten are bound for Mexico and 60 will go to India.