Seven rescued, 21 missing after shipwreck with migrants off the Italian coast of Lampedusa

By Alberto Chiumento and Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) – Seven people have been rescued and 21 others are missing at sea after a shipwreck carrying migrants off the island of Lampedusa, the Italian coast guard said on Wednesday.

The survivors, all male Syrian citizens, were rescued from a half-sunken boat about 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometers) southwest of Lampedusa, a statement said.

They told rescuers that they had set off from Libya on Sunday and that 21 of the 28 people on board, including three children, had fallen into the sea in rough weather.

The coast guard said it had brought the survivors to Lampedusa and deployed naval and air units to search for the missing.

The Italian office of the UN refugee agency UNHCR told Reuters that Sudanese were also on the boat, which probably set off from the port of Sabratha west of Tripoli.

The head of the Italian UNHCR, Chiara Cardoletti, wrote on X that the survivors were in a “critical” condition and had lost relatives at sea.

The boat “capsized several times and people clung to the side of the boat while their family members drowned around them,” Nicola Dell'Arciprete, UNICEF country coordinator for Italy, said in a statement.

The central Mediterranean is one of the world's deadliest migration routes. According to the UN migration agency (IOM), more than 2,500 migrants died or went missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year. This year, the number had risen to 1,047 as of Tuesday.

According to the latest figures from the Italian Interior Ministry, just over 43,000 migrants have reached Italy so far in 2024, significantly fewer than in previous years.

(Edited by Alvise Armellini, Keith Weir and David Gregorio)