MILAN: A migrant boat carrying around 35 people sailing from Libya capsized in the central Mediterranean leaving one 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 traveling alone, and recovered the body of a pregnant woman, UNICEF’s Nicola Dell’Arciprete said.
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 UN agencies, Dell’Arciprete said.
Commenting on the news of the shipwreck on social media platform X, Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesperson for the UN International Organization for Migration, said that at least 916 migrants had died in the central Mediterranean so far in 2025.
Meanwhile, migrants and rights activists protested in Rome against Italy’s migrant deal with Libya.
Under a 2017 deal renewed under Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s hard-right government, Italy funds and trains the Libyan coast guard.
In return, Libya is expected to help stem the departure of migrants to Italy or return those already at sea back to Libya. That agreement is up for renewal next month.
During the protest, dozens of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa observed a minute of silence for those who died trying to cross the Mediterranean.
Hundreds of people attended the event, including activist Sarita Fratini.
“In the central Mediterranean, there is a line called the line of death,” Fratini said.
Fratini has been helping migrants sue Italy after they were seized in the Mediterranean and pushed back to detention centers.
Irene Dea, 46, from Ivory Coast, said she had tried to reach Europe three times by boat, with 12 people dying in the Mediterranean on her first attempt.
Last week, the Alarm Phone charity, which runs a hotline for migrants stranded in the Mediterranean, reported a fatal shooting at a boat it said was carrying 113 migrants southeast of Malta.
Italy’s coast guard also said migrants it subsequently rescued said they had been shot at.
If boats are not returned to Libya, migrants still have to survive the journey across the Mediterranean.
That crossing has cost the lives of more than 1,000 people so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
