One woman lost her life, two people were feared missing, and 87 others were rescued after a migrant boat sank off the coast of Italy’s Lampedusa island, a U.N. migration agency official reported on Monday.
Lying between Tunisia, Malta, and Sicily, Lampedusa is often the first landing point for migrants attempting the perilous journey from North Africa to the European Union — a passage that has become one of the deadliest sea routes in the world.
According to Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesperson for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the migrants were initially saved by a Tunisian fishing vessel before being transferred to the Italian coastguard. They arrived in Lampedusa at around 4 a.m. (0200 GMT). The group had departed from Tunisia on a fragile metal boat that broke apart during the journey. Di Giacomo described such boats as “floating coffins.”
“We are trying to see if, apart from the body that was recovered, one or two people are missing. Probably there are two,” he said.
In a separate incident overnight, about 80 migrants — including children and two or three pregnant women — reached Lampedusa after what Di Giacomo described as a “dramatic” crossing in dangerous weather conditions.
“They were lucky to make it, given the sea conditions they faced,” he said, noting that this group had set off from Libya on Friday aboard a rubber dinghy.
Since 2014, more than 25,000 migrants have died or disappeared on the central Mediterranean route linking North Africa and Italy, according to IOM figures. That includes 1,810 deaths last year and 542 so far this year.
