A migrant boat carrying around 35 people sailing from Libya capsized in the central Mediterranean leaving one confirmed dead and two dozen missing, UNICEF country coordinator for Italy said on Sunday.
The rescue operation was carried out on Friday off the coast of Italy’s Lampedusa island by the Italian Coast Guard, which saved 11 migrants, including four children travelling alone, and recovered the body of a pregnant woman, UNICEF’s Nicola Dell’Arciprete said, Reuters reported.
The survivors and the body were brought to Lampedusa, while the remaining passengers remain unaccounted for.
The boat capsized after two days at sea, Dell’Arciprete said.
More than 32,700 migrants have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean since 2014, including an estimated one in five who were children, according to data from United Nations agencies, Dell’Arciprete said.
Commenting on the news of the shipwreck on social media platform X, Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesperson for the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, said that at least 916 migrants had died in the central Mediterranean so far in 2025.