By Crispian Balmer and Alvise Armellini
ROME, April 1 (Reuters) – Italy’s coast guard recovered the bodies of 19 migrants and rescued 58 survivors from a boat that broke down while trying to cross to Europe from Libya, rescue officials and migrant rescue charities said on Wednesday.
Some of the victims — 18 men and one woman — appear to have died of hypothermia, a spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the MSF humanitarian group said.
The survivors, including five children, were taken to the island of Lampedusa. A further three people who had been aboard the boat, were missing, a rescue official said, declining to be named.
German migrant rescue group Sea-Watch said the 19 deaths were part of a recent surge in fatalities at sea, estimating that at least 104 people had died in the Mediterranean over the past three days, including 18 people who drowned when their inflatable boat sank off western Turkey earlier on Wednesday.
“The situation is terrifying: people adrift at sea for days without any help,” Sea-Watch said in a statement.
The IOM spokesperson estimated the latest tragedy near Lampedusa brought the number of known deaths in the central Mediterranean this year to 643 — one of the highest tolls since 2014.
The spokesperson said the boat had set off from western Libya late Saturday or early Sunday, meaning it was at sea for at least three days. Among those on board were migrants from Niger, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Bad weather has roiled the Mediterranean this year limiting the number of departures from North Africa, and posing grave problems for those who have managed to put to sea.
Latest Italian interior ministry data says 6,117 migrants have reached the country by boat so far this year against 9,215 in the same period of 2025, and 11,416 in the first three months of 2024.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer and Alvise Armellini, editing by Francesca Piscioneri and Gavin Jones)
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