According to a senior UN official and Italy’s coastguard, at least 20 migrants were reported missing in the Mediterranean after their vessel capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday.
Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR official for Italy, announced on X that twenty individuals are missing in the Mediterranean following a shipwreck on September 1.
She stated that the seven survivors, who were sheltered by our team on Lampedusa, are in a critical condition. She also mentioned that several of them had lost loved ones in the calamity.
The Italian coastguard, which claimed to have rescued the survivors on Wednesday morning, reported that 21 individuals were still missing.
The vessel, which was discovered 20 kilometers (12 miles) off Lampedusa, was “drifting half-submerged in the water and on the brink of sinking, with seven migrants on board, all of whom were men of Syrian nationality.”
The men were observed in a small vessel that was entirely submerged in water, gliding to the rescue boats on inflated slides, as evidenced by coastguard footage.
“The rescued migrants said that they had left Libya on September 1 with 28 people on board, three of them minors, of whom 21 had fallen in the water because of the bad weather conditions,” the organization reported in a statement.
The search for the missing was ongoing, and an aircraft was assisting in the operation.
