20 persons said to be missing after migrant boat sinks in the Mediterranean
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Around 20 people were said to be missing on Monday after a migrant boat shipwreck that left one person confirmed dead, according to survivors.
Fishermen rescued the group of 34 migrants and refugees in the Italian search and rescue (SAR) area after their 7-m boat went down.
The rescuers also recovered the body of a man.
The survivors – 26 men, 8 women and 6 minors, from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, the Comoro Islands and Sudan – and the victim were subsequently transferred onto a Coast Guard vessel and taken to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
The group had departed from Sfax in Tunisia on Saturday evening, and survivors told rescuers they had paid between 500 and 600 euros for the crossing.
The Coast Guard and Finance Police were searching the shipwreck area for the missing.
In another development, a group of 37 migrants and refugees were intercepted by finance police on Monday after landing independently on Lampedusa.
The arrivals, from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo and who included three women, were spotted in Cala Galera on the southern shore of the tiny Sicilian island that is closer to north Africa than it is to Italy.
The group said they had departed from Sfax in Tunisia.
There was reportedly no sign of the boat used in the crossing.
