ROME: Seven people were rescued and 21 people are missing at sea after a migrant shipwreck off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, Italian news reports and UN officials said on Wednesday.

The survivors are Syrian nationals who told rescuers that three children are among the missing, the reports said. The seven survivors were rescued by the coast guard and said they were travelling on a boat that had set off from Libya a few days ago, with 28 people on board.

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“Twenty people are reported missing in the Mediterranean after a shipwreck on Sept 1,” Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR official for Italy, posted on X. “The seven survivors, taken in by our team on Lampedusa, are in a critical condition,” she said, adding that several of them had lost loved ones in the disaster.

Nicola Dell’Arciprete, Unicef country coordinator for Italy, denounced “another tragic shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa.”

“Most of the survivors claim to have lost family members. We are on the spot with our operational teams,” he wrote on X.

The central Mediterranean is one of the world’s deadliest migration routes. According to the UN migration agency (IOM), more than 2,500 migrants died or went missing attempting the crossing last year, and 1,047 this year, as of Tuesday.

In 2023, more 3,000 migrants were reported missing after having attempted the perilous Mediterranean crossing from north Africa, according to IOM. The latest figures from the Italian interior ministry recorded that just over 43,000 migrants had reached Italy so far in 2024, well down on previous years.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2024