Italian authorities searched Thursday for migrants missing at sea after two crowded boats sank off the island of Lampedusa, killing at least 27 people.
As many as a dozen or more people are still unaccounted for following Wednesday’s disaster, according to testimony from among the 60 survivors, mostly from Somalia.
Three minors, including a newborn baby, and seven women and 13 men were among the dead, according to the prosecutor’s office in Agrigento, on Sicily.
Post-mortem examinations confirmed that those 23 died of drowning, according to the ANSA news agency. UN officials said 27 people were confirmed dead so far.
The two boats had left Tripoli, Libya, earlier on Wednesday, Italy’s coastguard said.
It is believed one of the boats started taking on water, causing people to climb onto the other boat, which then capsized.
At Lampedusa’s cemetery on Thursday evening, where many of the bodies are being kept, some women came and left flowers, and prayed for the dead.
“It seemed fitting, at least to stop by and say a prayer for these people who were seeking a better life,” said Donata, a holidaymaker visiting the island who declined to give her family name.
“They did nothing, and they died,” she told AFP.
An Italian helicopter had spotted a capsized boat and several bodies in the water on Wednesday about 14 nautical miles off Lampedusa.
One Somali woman lost her son and husband, according to an account reported by the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
“I had my son in my arms and my husband beside me. I don’t know how, but we found ourselves in the water. The waves took them both away from me,” she said.
Lampedusa, just 90 miles (145 kilometres) off the coast of Tunisia, is often the first point of arrival for people trying to reach Europe in leaky or overcrowded boats.
But it is also a tourist hotspot, famed for its white sand beaches.
On Thursday, it was filled with holidaymakers visiting for Friday’s Ferragosto public holiday, with pleasure boats using the same port as the vessels searching for the missing.
Two of the survivors were taken by helicopter to Sicily for treatment, while the other 58 were being cared for in the reception centre on the island, according to the Red Cross.
Twenty-one of them are minors and “generally in good health”, said Imad Dalil, the Red Cross official who runs the reception centre.
He said the majority of the survivors are Somali, with a few Egyptians.
Around 95 people were on the boats, UN officials reported initially, but ANSA said it appeared there may have been more, perhaps 100 to 110 people.
Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, had earlier confirmed the toll of 27 dead.
“Over 700 refugees and migrants have now died in 2025 in the Central Mediterranean”, which the UN judges to be the world’s deadliest maritime migrant crossing, he wrote on social media.
“All responses — rescue at sea, safe pathways, helping transit countries and addressing root causes — must be strengthened,” he said.
Despite the tragedy laying bare the risks, the migrant boats kept coming.
Four others were intercepted off Lampedusa overnight, according to the Red Cross, while more migrants arrived during Thursday.
More than 260 people were being held in the reception centre waiting for processing as of Thursday evening, ANSA said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered her “deepest condolences” to the victims and vowed to step up efforts to tackle migrant traffickers.
Her hard-right government took office in 2022 vowing to cut the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.
More than 38,500 people have arrived on Italian shores so far this year, according to interior ministry figures.
This is slightly up on last year but well below the 100,000 reported by the same time in 2023.
