20 migrants missing after wreck off Italy: UN

Rome: At least 20 migrants were missing in the Mediterranean after their vessel sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, a senior official with the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.

“20 people are reported missing in the Mediterranean after a shipwreck on September 1,” Chiara Cardoletti, the UNHCR official for Italy, posted on X.

“The seven survivors, taken in by our team on Lampedusa, are in a critical condition,” she said, adding that several of them had lost loved ones in the disaster.

Italy´s coastguard, which said they had rescued the survivors on Wednesday morning, said 21 people were missing.

It said the vessel, found 20-kms off Lampedusa, “was drifting half-submerged in the water and on the point of sinking, with seven migrants on board, all of them men of Syrian.