Another tragedy has just struck one of the deadliest migratory routes. Eleven people died and dozens are still missing, after the sinking of two migrant boats in the Mediterranean on Monday June 17, according to an NGO and the coast guard. These boats, stranded off the coast of Italy, left one from Turkey and the other from North Africa, according to the same sources.
The German NGO ResQship reported on X that its humanitarian ship Nadir rescued “ 51 people, two of whom were unconscious” between the Libyan coast and the Italian island of Lampedusa. They were “on a wooden boat filled with water”in which were the bodies of ten other migrants.
The Italian coast guard announced that it had recovered 12 people from a sailboat adrift off the coast of Calabria (south), near the divide between Italian and Greek waters. A passenger died during rescue operations. According to the Ansa agency, around fifty passengers are missing.
Research still ongoing
The alarm was raised by French boaters who recovered the shipwrecked people aboard their boat about 120 nautical miles from the Italian coast. The migrants were then picked up aboard a diverted commercial ship, then onto a coast guard launch which took them to the port of Roccella Ionica.
Read also | Migrant crossings resume in the Mediterranean, but arrivals in Italy decrease
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The search, after these shipwrecks, continues with maritime and air resources from the coast guard and Frontex, according to a press release from the coast guard, which does not specify the number of missing people. In 2023, 3,155 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean, compared to 2,411 the previous year according to figures recorded by the International Organization for Migration.
The central Mediterranean remains one of the deadliest migration routes in the world. It alone accounted for 80% of deaths and disappearances last year.
