Between 12 and 17 people are still missing
At least 20 migrants have died and more than a dozen are missing following the wreck of a vessel off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.
“Between 12 and 17 people are missing in the wreck of Lamado, adding to at least 20 dead,” Filippo Ungaro, spokesman for the UN agency for refugees, who is supporting about 60 rescued survivors of the sea and taken to the island.
Relief operations continued this afternoon in the area where the vessel, from Libya, sank, 14 miles southwest of Lampedusa Island, but are described as “very complex” by the rescue teams.
According to UNHCR’s head, “to date, there were 675” dead and missing since the beginning of the year in the central Mediterranean, considered one of the most dangerous migratory routes in the world, being today’s double shipwreck one of the worst tragedies to have a Largo de Lampedusa.
Lampedusa, a small 20-kilometer-mile island with about six thousand inhabitants, is the southernmost point of Italy, having become one of the main points of entry in Europe of irregular migrants, mostly sub-Saharan, crossing the Mediterranean on precarious vessels operated by traffickers networks since Libya and Tunisia.
