Six migrants and refugees have died and 40 are missing after the boat they were travelling on capsized near Lampedusa in the Mediterranean Sea, a United Nations official said.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative Chiara Cardoletti said on Wednesday that the inflatable rubber boat left Tunisia on Monday carrying 56 people, adding that ‘still too many dead in a new shipwreck in the Mediterranean’.
According to Italy’s news agency ANSA, Italian coastguard vessels have rescued 10 people and resumed the search for other survivors and the shipwreck took place near the island of Lampedusa.
Those travelling on the boat were from Ivory Coast, Malo, The Gambia and Cameroon as reported by AGI news agency. Survivors stated that some of the missing had fallen overboard in rough seas.
Initial reports added that a separate group of 40 people landed on Lampedusa after travelling from Sfax in Tunisia on Metal boats. There were five landings in Lampedusa on Tuesday with a total of 213 people arriving, bringing the number of people at the island’s reception centre to 230, the reports added.
Italy’s Ministry of the Interior said that 8,743 people have arrived in Italy this year which is slightly more than the arrivals in the same period last year. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 31,500 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014. As for this year, the figure stands at 246 people.
