The boat “capsized repeatedly, leaving people clinging to the side of the boat as their relatives drowned around them”, Nicola Dell’Arciprete, UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) country coordinator for Italy, a statement posted online said.
The survivors, all Syrian men, told rescuers they had set sail from Libya and that 21 of the 28 people on board, including three children, had fallen into the sea during bad weather.
According to the Italian office of the UN refugee agency, there were also several Sudanese on the boat (UN refugee agency).
The deadly crossing of the Mediterranean
According to recent research, the Central Mediterranean is among the deadliest migration routes in the world. Missing Migrants Project from the UN migration agency IOM.
The IOM found that more than 2,500 migrants died or went missing while trying to cross the border last year alone, with more than 1,000 more reported so far this year.
General, one in three According to an IOM analysis of migrant deaths from 2014 to 2023, migrants die while fleeing conflict.
Last year was the deadliest ever recordedwith 8,541 migrant victims. Nearly 60 percent of these deaths were due to drowning.
Tragedy on the English Channel
Reports of six children and a pregnant mother under the age of twelve drowning in the English Channel on Tuesday is yet another “unacceptable tragedy,” UNICEF’s office covering Europe said on Wednesday.
“We cannot stand by and watch as yet another European coastline becomes a graveyard for children,” they stressed, adding that one in five people arriving illegally in the UK is a child.
“There is an urgent need for safer and more regular routes, and solutions to the core issues that drive people to leave their homes,” IOM chief Amy Pope said on X in response to the needless deaths.