At least 58 migrants died when their wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart off southern Italy before dawn Sunday, the Italian coast guard and UN agencies said. Survivors indicated that dozens more could be missing from the boat that had set out from Türkiye.
The Italian Coast Guard said at least 80 people were found alive, “some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck.”
The precise numbers were hard to establish.
The provisional death toll stands at 58, Manuela Curra, a provincial government official, told Reuters. She said 81 people survived, with 20 hospitalized including one person in intensive care.
Authorities said the cloth-covered bodies were brought to the sports stadium in the nearest city, Crotone.
More than 170 migrants were estimated to have been aboard the ship, two UN agencies, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, said in a joint statement that cited survivor accounts.
Among those aboard, there were "children and entire families,'' the UN statement, with most of the passengers coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
The boat collided with the reefs in violently rough seas, whipped up by powerful winds. Some of the wreckage ended up on a stretch of beach along Calabria's Ionian Sea coast, where splintered pieces of bright blue wood littered the sand like matchsticks.
“All of the survivors are adults,'' said Red Cross volunteer Ignazio Mangione. ”Unfortunately, all the children are among the missing or were found dead on the beach." A months-old baby and a boy of 8 were reported among the dead.
Reporting from the village of Steccato di Cutro, state TV quoted survivors as saying the boat had set out five days earlier from Türkiye's western port of Izmir.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said the migrants had been crowded into a 20-meter-long boat.
Meloni expressed deep sorrow for the deaths, and blamed inhumane human traffickers who profit while offering migrants "the false prospect of a safe journey."
"The government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so, first of all by calling for maximum cooperation from the countries of departure and of origin," she said.
