Photo Credit: Getty Images
At least 27 migrants have died after two boats capsized off the coast of Tunisia on Wednesday, according to Tunisia TV. The boats, carrying migrants from sub-Saharan African countries, sank about three miles off Alataya in Tunisia's Kerkennah Islands, where 83 survivors were rescued.
The Red Cross said on Thursday that there have been at least four shipwrecks in the area in the last week, claiming 84 lives in total. Of these disasters, three boats set off from Tunisia and one departed from Libya, it said.
This comes after UNICEF announced on Wednesday that more than 2,200 people died in the Mediterranean during 2024.
This figure includes “hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating through the Mediterranean,” the UNICEF statement said. The majority of these children are fleeing violent conflict and poverty, it added.
Just hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, a boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, UNICEF said, leaving more than 20 people missing, including women and children. Among the seven survivors is an 8-year-old child whose mother is unaccounted for, it said.
Lampedusa is an Italian island in the Mediterranean, far closer to Tunisia’s coast than either mainland Italy or the island of Sicily. Many in Northern Africa aiming to reach Europe travel to Lampedusa, as it requires a shorter journey than reaching the mainland continent.
In total, at least 31,184 migrants have either died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which last updated its figures on December 31, 2024. Most of these incidents took place on the Central Mediterranean route, where migrants attempted to cross from North Africa to Italy or Malta, the IOM said.
A total of 66,317 migrants landed in Italy in 2024, the Italian government said on Thursday, down from 157,651 in 2023 and 105,131 in 2022. Most of these migrants were reported to be from Bangladesh, Syria or Tunisia, the report said.
Despite this, deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean over the last few years have stayed roughly consistent, according to the IOM.
