Forty nine migrants attempting to travel from North Africa to Europe have been rescued by the Italian Coast Guard after their boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Lampedusa Island on Thursday.
The migrants from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal and Bangladesh where rescued from the sea by a coast guard's patrol boat, Anadolu news agency reports.
The exact number of migrants on the boat is not known but survivors said there were more and that they had each paid approximately $650 for the journey.
According to data from Italy’s Interior Ministry, the number of irregular migrants who have arrived in the country by sea since the beginning of the year totals 2,268. During the same period last year, the number was 4,963.
In August 2023, Italian officials said 41 migrants headed for the island of Lampedusa Italy died in a shipwreck in the central Mediterranean after leaving the Tunisian coast.
Since 2014 over 26,000 people have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean, including over 20,000 along the Central Mediterranean route which is considered among the deadliest migration routes in the world, according to the UN.
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