A boat carrying migrants capsized in Malta’s Search and Rescue (SAR) zone, resulting in the deaths of two children.
Seventeen other migrants were rescued, including a pregnant woman and a critically injured man. According to the German NGO Sea Punks, two people remain missing at sea. Among the victims, one child was found dead. A medical team managed to resuscitate another child, but a third child could not be saved.
A Maltese rescue helicopter evacuated the pregnant woman and the critically injured man, while the Italian Coast Guard transported 15 other survivors and retrieved the bodies of the two deceased children. Survivors reported that the boat initially carried 21 people, with two still missing.
The migration route from North Africa to Southern Europe remains one of the deadliest in the world. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), approximately 24,500 people have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean over the past decade, with many fatalities linked to small, overcrowded boats departing from Tunisia and Libya.
