Unprecedented Flooding Hits Tunis
Since the last two days of January 2026, a rare and almost unimaginable event has occurred: the waters of the Gulf of Tunis and the old port of Tunis have overflowed. The Tunis-Marine neighborhood and the beginning of Avenue Bourguiba now resemble floating squares, with water covering almost the entire ground. Social media is filled with photos and videos illustrating these facts. Comments are pouring in from all sides... Some people who have circulated near the florists installed in Tunis-Marine swear they saw fish swimming at the beginning of Avenue Bourguiba! The main artery, which was once the beating heart of downtown Tunis, now risks losing its entrance. It seems to be becoming a gradual aquatic extension of the old port of Tunis... The entrance to the capital is truly marine... The images shared on social media are breathtaking! Residents of the area, inhabitants of the buildings, residents of the famous El Béhi hotel, and other merchants installed on both sides of Avenue Bourguiba are launching distress calls. Some are shouting that they can no longer leave their building, whose entrance is submerged by water. They had long believed that it was rainwater that had flooded the ground. But that's false - it's actually seawater that has overflowed! Even today, the entrance to the capital is still submerged by the waters of the Mediterranean. The overflow of the canal connecting the Lake of Tunis to the port of La Goulette has spewed out its surplus, transforming the beginning of Avenue Habib Bourguiba into a vast expanse of brackish water, paralyzing traffic and isolating access to the TGM terminal. Is nature taking its course? This overflow of seawater has caused significant disruptions and concerns. Cars passing on the highway leading to La Goulette report that they are driving on water... That being said, if experts have warned of the increasing vulnerability of the coastline to rising sea levels, older Tunisians say that the sea is reclaiming what is rightfully theirs... Yes, the elderly tell stories that the aforementioned Bab-bhar (sea gate) owes its name to the existence of the sea on the current Tunis Marine square. These same old people are convinced that water has a strong memory, that it never forgets these natural circuits, and that it always ends up taking its old path...
The Underlying Causes of the Flooding
This phenomenon, although spectacular, is not the result of chance. And even if seniors think it's nature taking its course, experts have a different vision. In fact, climatologists point to a combination of three critical factors that caused this situation: marine surcharge, sea level rise, and saturation of drainage networks... Experts agree that the strong atmospheric depressions recorded in recent weeks in the Mediterranean basin have caused a temporary but brutal rise in sea levels. Driven by violent northeast winds, the water surged forcefully into the La Goulette canal, which was unable to absorb this surplus volume. They also explain that this overflow illustrates the increasing vulnerability of the low-lying areas of the Tunisian coastline. "With the global rise in water levels, the threshold of tolerance of the port and urban infrastructure of Tunis, built at zero level, is now regularly exceeded during strong storms," they note. And they add that the absence of flood expansion zones around the port and the saturation of stormwater drainage networks add to this situation. "This lack of expansion prevented the rapid withdrawal of water, creating this situation of stagnation at strategic intersections," they explain. The flooding of Tunis Marine is no longer a hypothesis, but a reality that future development plans must imperatively address to protect the historic heart and economic nerve of Tunis from sinking underwater...
