At least 20 people have died in a shipwreck off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, and a United Nations agency says more refugees and migrants could be missing as search operations continue.
Rescue services on Wednesday found 20 bodies, while 60 survivors, 56 men and four women, were brought ashore to Lampedusa, according to the Italian Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The disaster, involving people travelling from Libya, was the latest to befall refugees and migrants making the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe.
Rights groups and UN agencies have also documented systematic abuse against refugees and migrants in Libya, including torture, rape and extortion. In February, Libyan authorities uncovered nearly 50 bodies from two mass graves in the country’s southeastern desert, in the latest horror involving people seeking to make it to Europe through the North African country.
Since the beginning of this year, 675 people have died in the central Mediterranean while trying to make the crossing, said Filippo Ungaro, a UNHCR spokesperson in Italy.
An Italian law enforcement aircraft spotted a capsized boat with bodies in the water about 23km (14 miles) off Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, triggering a rescue operation, a source close to the matter told the Reuters news agency.
The Reuters source said that based on initial accounts from the rescued people, they departed from the Tripoli area in Libya in the early morning aboard two boats. One of the boats began taking on water, and they transferred to the other vessel, which later capsized in rough waters.
Initial UNHCR figures suggested that 92 to 97 people were in the group, indicating as many as 17 people were missing.
Cristina Palma, who works for the Italian Red Cross in Lampedusa, said in a video statement that the survivors were in “decent” health, but four of them had been hospitalised for checks.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government has vowed to block the refugee and migrant sea journeys from Africa and has passed measures against human smugglers, including tougher jail terms, and has urged allies to do more to curb the migration attempts.
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