Tripoli— Twenty migrants are missing and presumed dead after their small boat flipped over and sank near the Italian island of Lampedusa. The migrants had set sail from the coast city of Zuwara in western Libya on 30 December, according to news reports.
The boat was carrying 27 people, according to seven survivors who arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday evening.
The Guardian reported that survivors confirmed that those missing had fallen into the sea from the boat that was knocked off balance by huge waves and began to take on water about 20 miles off the coast of Libya and did not sink at first.
The six-meter-long boat left Zuwara in Libya at 10pm on Monday. Despite the waves, the seven people managed to continue their journey on the dilapidated vessel before they were found by an Italian police patrol boat near the southern island of Lampedusa on Tuesday evening.
The ship was initially thought to have capsized near Lampedusa, so the Italian police and coast guard launched a search and rescue operation overnight in the sea area southwest of the island.
But according to witnesses quoted by the Italian press, the boat began taking on water about five hours after it left Libya and Malta, causing panic and causing 20 passengers to fall into the sea.
The witnesses, including two Syrians, two Egyptians and two Sudanese, said five women and three children were among those who fell into the sea, describing the sea as rough and the wind strong. The seventh survivor was an eight-year-old Syrian boy, and they were all taken first to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa and afterwards were taken to Porto Empedocle in Sicily.
The boy, according to Reuters, was hoping to join his father in Germany. The boy was accompanied by his mother on the journey and she was among those had been missing on early Tuesday morning.
Lampedusa mayor Filippo Mannino assumes that all twenty people had drowned. “They didn’t make it to shore. Knowing that these poor souls were so close but couldn’t make it is even more heartbreaking,” he said in a statement.
According to the ANSA news agency, the Italian authorities have stopped the search and informed their Libyan and Maltese counterparts of the incident.