At least 11 people have died, and more than 60 are missing following two shipwrecks off the coast of southern Italy, according to rescuers.
The German charity RESQSHIP reported rescuing 51 people from a sinking wooden boat and discovering 10 bodies trapped on the lower deck near the island of Lampedusa on Monday.
In a separate incident on the same day, more than 60 individuals were reported missing, with 26 of them feared to be children, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The boats were carrying migrants who had departed from Libya and Turkey, as confirmed by UN agencies.
Survivors from the Lampedusa shipwreck were transferred to the Italian coastguard and brought ashore on Monday morning, while the deceased were being towed to the island, RESQSHIP stated.
The boat had left Libya carrying migrants from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, according to a joint statement by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
The other shipwreck occurred approximately 125 miles off the coast of Calabria in southern Italy.
Among the 12 survivors, one person died after disembarking, reported the Italian coastguard. MSF’s Shakilla Mohammadi shared that survivors recounted 66 people unaccounted for, including at least 26 children, some just a few months old.
“Entire families from Afghanistan are presumed dead. They left from Turkey eight days ago and had taken in water for three or four days.
They told us they had no life vests and some vessels did not stop to help them,” she said in a statement.
The Mediterranean is the deadliest known migration route in the world.
More than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing in its waters since 2014, according to UN data.
