KEY POINTS
- At least 11 people have died, and over 60 are missing after two shipwrecks off the southern coast of Italy
- The boats were carrying migrants who had set off from Libya and Turkey
- The Mediterranean is the deadliest migration route in the world, with over 23,500 migrants having died or gone missing in its waters since 2014
Eleven dead and dozens missing in two shipwrecks
At least 11 people have died, and over 60 are missing after two shipwrecks off the southern coast of Italy, according to rescuers.
German charity RESQSHIP rescued 51 people from a sinking wooden boat and found 10 bodies trapped in the lower deck near the island of Lampedusa on Monday.
In another incident the same day, more than 60 people were reported missing, including 26 children, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.
The boats were carrying migrants who had set off from Libya and Turkey, according to UN agencies.
Survivors from the Lampedusa shipwreck were handed over to the Italian coastguard and taken ashore on Monday morning, while the deceased were being towed to the island, RESQSHIP reported.
The boat had departed from Libya with migrants from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, according to a joint statement from the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and UNICEF.
The other shipwreck occurred about 125 miles off the coast of Calabria in southern Italy, the agencies said. One of the 12 survivors died after disembarking, the Italian coastguard reported.
MSF’s Shakilla Mohammadi said survivors mentioned that 66 people were unaccounted for, including at least 26 children, some just a few months old. “Entire families from Afghanistan are presumed dead. They left from Turkey eight days ago and had taken in water for three or four days. They told us they had no life vests and some vessels did not stop to help them,” she said.
The Mediterranean is the deadliest migration route in the world, with over 23,500 migrants having died or gone missing in its waters since 2014, according to UN data.