At least 20 migrants dead after boat capsizes off Italy's Lampedusa, UN says

A boat carrying almost 100 migrants capsized on Wednesday off the Italian island of Lampedusa, killing at least 20 and leaving many missing, the UN refugee agency said.

Some 60 survivors have been brought to a centre in Lampedusa, said a UNHCR spokesman in Italy. According to accounts of those who survived the shipwreck, there had been between 92 and 97 migrants on board when the boat departed from Libya.

Authorities have recovered 20 bodies, and were searching for another 12 to 17 survivors, UNHCR said.

According to the UN agency, 675 migrants have died making the perilous Central Mediterranean crossing so far this year, not counting the latest sinking.

"Deep anguish over yet another shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, where UNHCR is now assisting the survivors," its spokesman Filippo Ungaro wrote on social media X.

In the first six months of 2025, 30,060 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy by sea, a 16% increase compared to the same period last year, according to UNHCR.

Since 2014, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Central Mediterranean route has become the most dangerous in the world, with more than 25,260 people having died or gone missing — many of them lost at sea.

The IOM says the true figure could be even higher as many deaths go unrecorded. Most of the deaths have been attributed to small boats leaving from Tunisia and Libya.

In what was one of the Mediterranean's worst ever shipwrecks, a boat departing from Libya capsized a few miles from Lampedusa on 3 October 2013. At least 368 people died. The outcry was so severe that Italy since established an annual day of remembrance for victims of that shipwreck and other fatal capsizings that year.

The EU has in recent years implemented stricter immigration controls, while Italy's government has introduced laws aimed at reducing the number of sea crossings.

In July, the EU's commissioner for migration said Europe would take a "firm" approach with authorities in Libya following a spike in irregular migration across the Mediterranean.

Separately, the leaders of Turkey, Italy and Libya discussed the Mediterranean migration route at a meeting in Istanbul earlier this month.