At least 70 migrants were missing after their boat capsized on Saturday off the coast of Libya as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, according to survivors rescued by a commercial ship and then brought to the island of Lampedusa.
Local representatives of the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency said Sunday that there were 32 survivors, including one minor. Both agencies said survivors had told them that more than 100 people had been aboard a lightweight boat that left the port of Tajoura, Libya, between Friday night and Saturday morning.
The survivors said weather conditions had been very rough, with high waves. The boat began taking on water and capsized several hours after it had begun the crossing, while still in Libyan waters.
Sea-Watch, a German organization that runs rescue missions and monitors the Mediterranean, said in a statement Saturday that one of its aircraft had received word of a boat in distress in the central Mediterranean. When the aircraft arrived, “it found an overturned wooden boat with about 15 people desperately clinging to the hull, several people in the water, and some bodies,” Sea-Watch said in a statement.
Roberto D’Arrigo, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard, said his Libyan counterparts had organized the rescue efforts, which involved an Italian merchant ship and a Liberian merchant ship.
The survivors had been transferred to the Italian ship, which on Sunday brought them close to the port of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost island. The island has become a gateway to Europe for thousands of desperate asylum seekers and migrants.
The 32 survivors — all men from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt — were then transferred to an Italian Coast Guard ship, which brought them to the port, Captain D’Arrigo said. Two corpses were also brought aboard the ship.
Filippo Ungaro, a spokesman for UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, said the migrants had tried to make the crossing in a light boat that was “very unsuitable for crossing the Mediterranean.” He said the survivors had told UNHCR staff that 70 passengers were still missing.
“But that has to be verified,” he said.
According to an I.O.M. spokesman in Italy, as many as 120 people may have been on board the ship that capsized.
If the numbers are confirmed, it would represent one of the worst migrant tragedies in the Mediterranean, which Pope Francis had once described as the “largest cemetery in Europe.”
In 2013, Francis made Lampedusa the site of his first official trip outside Rome. Francis died last April. His successor, Pope Leo XIV, is planning to visit Lampedusa on July 4.
More than 33,450 migrants have died or gone missing in Mediterranean waters since the I.O.M. began tracking deaths at sea in 2014. Most of them died crossing the central Mediterranean between North African countries like Libya and European nations including Italy and Malta. Others have died in the narrower eastern straits between Turkey and Greece, or to the west between Morocco and Spain.
A migrant rescue organization, Mediterranea Saving Humans, said on social media: “This latest shipwreck is not a tragic accident, but the result of policies pursued by European governments, which refuse to open legal and safe entry routes.”
At least 725 people have gone missing in the central Mediterranean this year alone, including in one shipwreck in February in which at least 53 migrants, including two babies, went missing. Just last week, the Italian coast guard found 19 bodies and rescued 58 people after intercepting a dinghy filled with migrants that was in distress about 80 nautical miles from Lampedusa.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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