At least 70 migrants are missing after their boat capsized on Saturday, April 4, off the coast of Libya as they tried to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. The account came from survivors rescued by a commercial vessel and taken to the island of Lampedusa.
Representatives of the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency said on Sunday that 32 people, including one minor, had been rescued. According to them, the survivors said that more than 100 people had been aboard the light vessel, which left the port of Tajoura sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning.
According to those rescued, weather conditions were extremely severe—with heavy swells. Several hours after setting off, the boat began taking on water and capsized while still in Libyan waters.
The German organization Sea-Watch, which conducts rescue operations and monitors conditions in the Mediterranean, said that on Saturday one of its aircraft received an alert about a vessel in distress in the central part of the sea. Upon arriving at the scene, the crew found “an overturned wooden boat, about 15 people desperately clinging to the hull, several people in the water, and bodies,” the group said in a statement.
Roberto D’Arrigo, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard, said the rescue operation was coordinated by Libyan authorities. Italian and Liberian merchant ships took part in the effort.
The survivors were transferred to an Italian vessel that reached the port of Lampedusa on Sunday—the southernmost point of Italy and one of the main routes for migrants and asylum seekers heading to Europe.
Later, the 32 rescued survivors—all men from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt—were transferred to an Italian Coast Guard ship and brought into port. Two bodies were also recovered and taken aboard, D’Arrigo said.
Filippo Ungaro, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said the migrants had tried to cross the sea in a light boat “wholly unfit for such a journey.” According to him, the survivors told agency staff that 70 people remained missing. “But that still has to be verified,” he added.
According to an IOM representative in Italy, as many as 120 people may have been aboard the capsized vessel.
If those estimates are confirmed, it would amount to one of the deadliest migrant tragedies in the Mediterranean, which Pope Francis once called “the largest cemetery in Europe.”
In 2013, Francis chose Lampedusa for his first trip outside Rome. He died in April last year. His successor, Pope Leo XIV, is due to visit the island on July 4.
Since 2014, when the IOM began recording deaths at sea, more than 33,450 migrants have died or gone missing in the waters of the Mediterranean. Most of them were attempting to cross the central stretch of the route between North African countries such as Libya and European states including Italy and Malta. Other cases have occurred along the eastern passage between Turkey and Greece or the western route between Morocco and Spain.
The rescue group Mediterranea Saving Humans said on social media: “The latest shipwreck is not a tragic accident, but the result of the policies of European governments that refuse to open legal and safe routes of entry.”
Since the start of the year, at least 725 people have gone missing in the central Mediterranean. In February, at least 53 migrants, including two infants, disappeared in one shipwreck. Last week, the Italian Coast Guard recovered 19 bodies and rescued 58 people after intercepting a distressed inflatable vessel about 80 nautical miles from Lampedusa.