In the first incident, a boat carrying migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, and Egypt capsized 90 kilometers south of the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea. While 51 people were rescued, 10 were found dead, trapped in the lower deck of the overcrowded vessel.
The rescue boat’s captain, Ingo Werth, described the situation as dire, with the migrants’ boat nearly capsizing, posing a significant danger to rescuers.
The migrants reported that they had departed from the Libyan port of Zuwarah two days prior.
In a separate incident between Italy and Greece, another migrant boat capsized, with 64 people reported missing and three bodies recovered. Eleven people have been rescued so far.
Italian authorities have deployed patrol boats, a ship, and a plane to search for the missing passengers, including 26 children.
The migrants in the second incident had set sail from Turkey and included individuals from Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration, and UNICEF.
These tragic incidents underscore the perilous nature of the central Mediterranean migration route, where more than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing since 2014, according to UN data.
