Six people died and 40 are missing after a migrant shipwreck in the Mediterranean, the United Nations said on Wednesday, while the Italian authorities were looking for survivors on the island of Lampedusa.
“There are still too many dead in a new shipwreck in the Mediterranean,” said Chiara Cardoletti, representative of the UNHCR Italy of the UN Refugee Agency, in X.
An inflatable boat that transported 56 people had left Sfax’s Tunisian port on Monday before getting into trouble, he said.
“After a few hours of navigation, the boat began to deflate and assume water. Six bodies were recovered. 40 missing,” he wrote.
The Italian Coast Guard and the Police took 10 people to a safe place, six men and four women, said an acnur spokesman AFPadding that they are touring the area for survivors.
The rescued said there had been 56 people aboard the Ivory, Mali, Guinea and Cameroon coast.
According to the reports, the boat was partially deflated from the small rocky outcrop of Lampione, west of Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than in Europe.
The survivors, who receive psychological support, said that some of the disappeared had fallen overboard into agitated seas, according to the news agency I.
After the migrants were rescued, a separate group of 40 migrants landed in Lampedusa after traveling from SFAX in metal ships, the ANSA The news agency said.
On Tuesday there were five landings in Lampedusa with a total of 213 migrants, which brought the number of people in the island’s reception center to 230, he said.
Around 8,743 migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year, a little more than in the same period last year, according to the Interior Ministry of Italy.
The Prime Minister of Extrem Right, Giorgia Meloni, has adopted a hard position on migrants, promising to stop arrivals, which are abruptly reduced in the 2023 figures.
The country is the first call for many people who make the dangerous trip in small boats from North Africa to Europe.
According to the International Migration Organization, 140 people have died or missing while trying the crossing so far this year.
Meloni’s emblematic plan is to outsource the processing of migrants to Albania, a country that is not EU, and accelerate the repatriations of failed asylum seekers.
But the scheme, which is being observed closely by Europe, has encountered several legal obstacles and centers specially designed in Albania are currently empty.
