Sixty people were pulled alive from the water off Lampedusa on Wednesday. At least 26 others were not.
Two boats carrying people from Libya sank off the Italian island on August 13, 2025. The Italian Red Cross and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said rescuers brought 56 men and four women ashore. Cristina Palma of the Red Cross, speaking in a video statement, described the survivors as being in “decent” health. Four were taken to hospital for checks.
The count of the dead is unlikely to stay at 26. Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesperson for the UN’s International Organization for Migration, put the number of people on both vessels at around 95. Subtract the 60 rescued and “approximately 35 victims are feared dead or missing”, he wrote on social media. Search operations were continuing.
How the boat went down
An Italian law enforcement aircraft spotted a capsized boat with bodies floating around it about 23km (14 miles) off Lampedusa on Wednesday morning. That set the rescue in motion, a source close to the matter told Reuters.
The same source relayed what the survivors had told rescuers. They left the Tripoli area of Libya in the early morning in two boats. One began taking on water, so everyone crowded onto the second. In rough seas, that boat rolled over.
A crossing that keeps killing
UNHCR’s Filippo Ungaro, speaking for the agency in Italy, said 675 people have died in the central Mediterranean this year while trying to make the crossing.
For many, Libya is the worse part of the journey. Rights groups and UN agencies have documented systematic abuse of migrants and refugees there, including torture, rape and extortion. In February, Libyan authorities uncovered nearly 50 bodies in two mass graves in the southeastern desert.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government has promised to stop the sea journeys from Africa. It has passed measures against human smugglers, including longer jail terms, and has urged allies to do more to curb the attempts. The boats from Tripoli kept leaving anyway.
