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Europe|21 Migrants Missing at Sea as Boat Capsizes in Rough Seas Off Italy
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/world/europe/italy-migrants-missing-libya.html
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Seven survivors were rescued from the boat that sank after leaving Libya. A crackdown by Italy has reduced migration, but not the high death rates that come with crossing the Mediterranean.
Video
Sept. 4, 2024, 5:39 p.m. ET
Twenty-one migrants were missing at sea on Wednesday, according to survivors rescued from a sinking boat about 10 miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa, Italy’s Coast Guard said.
Seven men, identified as Syrian, were rescued by a Coast Guard vessel on Wednesday morning. A video showed the migrants crouching in a small white motorboat, partly submerged, before being carried in pairs by a rubber raft to a waiting Coast Guard vessel.
The migrants told their rescuers that they had left Libya on Sunday on the boat packed with 28 people, including three minors. They said that 21 people had fallen off during the crossing because of “adverse weather conditions,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.
The seven survivors were taken to Lampedusa, one of the principal destinations for migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe on one of the world’s deadliest migration routes.
Last year, more than 212,000 migrants and refugees tried to cross the central Mediterranean Sea from North Africa, according to a report by the United Nations refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration, or I.O.M.
At least 3,105 lost their lives or went missing at sea while attempting to cross to Europe by various Mediterranean routes, according to the report. But it noted that “the real number of dead and missing along these routes is believed to be higher as many incidents go unreported or undetected.”
