According to volunteers, two wrecks off the coast of southern Italy have left at least 11 people dead and more than 60 lost, according to reports from the rescue teams.
European charity RESQSHIP reported picking up 51 people from a wooden vessel that had sunk, and discovered 10 bodies lying in the lower board on Monday near the island of Lampedusa.
In a separate incident on the same day, more than 60 people were reported missing, with 26 of them feared to be children, Médecins Sans Frontières ( MSF ) said.
According to UN agencies, the vessels were carrying refugees who had crossed from Turkey and Libya.
According to RESQSHIP, the accident victims were handed over to the Roman navy and sailed ashore on Monday night while the dying were being towed to the beach.
The boat had set off from Libya, and was carrying migrants from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration ( IOM) and UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a joint statement.
According to the agencies, the various tragedy was found 125 miles off the southern Italian coastline of Calabria.
One of the surviving 12 persons died after disembarking, the Roman navy said.
Survivor reports that 66 people are missing, including at least 26 children, some of whom are just a few weeks old, according to MSF’s Shakilla Mohammadi.
” Eire families from Afghanistan are presumed dead. They had been in water for three or four days when they left Turkey eight weeks prior. They claimed in a statement that some warships did not stop to aid them and that they had no life jackets.
The Mediterranean is the most fatal known migration path in the world.
Since 2014, more than 23,500 workers have perished or vanished in its lakes, according to UN information.