At least 26 people have died and around a dozen are missing after a boat carrying nearly 100 migrants capsized off the coast of Lampedusa, the Italian coastguard and UN agencies said.
Sixty survivors were taken to a centre on the Italian island, said Filippo Ungaro, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Italy.
There were up to 97 migrants on board when the boat departed Libya, according to survivor accounts.
Authorities were still searching for any remaining survivors.
An Italian law enforcement aircraft spotted a capsized boat with bodies in the water about 14 miles (23km) off Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, triggering a rescue operation, the coastguard said in a statement.
It also said five ships, two aircraft and one helicopter were operating at the rescue site.
The coastguard said 26 deaths had been confirmed so far but that was “provisional and being updated”.
Cristina Palma, who works for the Italian Red Cross in Lampedusa, said in a video statement that the survivors – 56 men and four women – were in “decent” health but four of them had been hospitalised for checks.
Based on survivor accounts, about 95 migrants left the Tripoli area of Libya on two boats, International Organisation for Migration spokesperson Flavio Di Giacomo said.
When one of the two vessels started to take on water, all the passengers were transferred to the other boat – made of fibreglass – which then capsized in international waters because of overloading, he said.
It was not immediately known how long the migrants had been at sea.
Migrants on a fibreglass boat off the coast of Lampedusa in July. Pic: Reuters
Italian PM’s ‘strong sense of dismay’
Lampedusa mayor Filippo Mannino said the disaster happened “presumably at dawn”.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who made combating illegal immigration a top priority of her right-wing government, pledged on Wednesday to continue fighting “unscrupulous traffickers” by “preventing irregular departures” and “managing migration flows”.
She said in a statement: “When a tragedy like this occurs, with the deaths of dozens of people in the waters of the Mediterranean, a strong sense of dismay and compassion arises in all of us… That today’s tragedy occurred despite a ready and operational international response warns us that the necessary rescue effort is not sufficient and, above all, does not address the root causes of this tragic problem.”
A total of 675 migrants have died making the perilous central Mediterranean crossing so far this year, not counting the latest sinking, according to the UNHCR.
“Deep anguish over yet another shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, where UNHCR is now assisting the survivors,” Mr Ungaro wrote on the X social media site.
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Tens of thousands die making crossing
A total of 30,060 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy by sea in the first six months of 2025 – a 16% increase compared with the same period last year, according to the UNHCR.
The irregular migration route from northern Africa to southern Europe is considered one of the most dangerous in the world, with almost 24,500 people dying or disappearing on the Mediterranean crossing in the past 10 years, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Most of the deaths have been attributed to small boats setting off from the coasts of Tunisia and Libya.
The deadliest migrant boat disaster off the coast of Lampedusa occurred on 3 October 2013, when a vessel carrying more than 500 migrants from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana caught fire and capsized, killing at least 368 people.
The tragedy prompted international calls for action to address the crisis.
The sinking off the coast of Lampedusa comes a day after figures showed more than 50,000 migrants have crossed the Channel from France to the UK since Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister.
Home Office statistics reveal that 474 people arrived on Monday in eight vessels – the highest number to make the journey in one day in August.
