Seven survivors, all Syrian, were found clinging to a half-sunk boat about 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometres) southwest of Lampedusa. Twenty-one other people from the same vessel were gone.
The Italian coast guard said in a statement on Wednesday that it had brought the survivors to the island and sent naval and air units to search for the missing. The survivors told rescuers the boat left Libya on Sunday with 28 people aboard. In rough weather, 21 of them, three children among them, fell into the sea.
Nicola Dell’Arciprete, UNICEF’s country coordinator for Italy, described what the survivors went through. The boat “capsized repeatedly, leaving people clinging to the side of the boat as their family members drowned around them,” he said.
Chiara Cardoletti, who heads the UN refugee agency’s office in Italy, wrote on X that the survivors were in “critical” condition and had lost relatives at sea. The agency’s Italian office also told Reuters that Sudanese people were on board. The boat is believed to have set out from the port of Sabratha, west of Tripoli.
A deadly crossing
The central Mediterranean is among the world’s deadliest migration routes. The International Organization for Migration counts more than 2,500 migrants dead or missing on the crossing last year, and 1,047 so far this year, as of Tuesday.
Arrivals are down. Figures from the Italian Interior Ministry show more than 43,000 migrants have reached Italy in 2024, well below earlier years.
