Five bodies have been recovered after a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Sicily. But the number of deaths could still rise.
A boat with migrants on board got into distress and capsized off the coast of Sicily on Saturday. Five bodies then washed up on the beach in the municipality of Marinella di Selinunte in the west of the Italian Mediterranean island, the Ansa news agency reported, citing the coast guard.
The search for missing people was still ongoing on Saturday afternoon. The waters off the coast were searched by coast guard and financial police forces.
According to Italian media reports, the old and unseaworthy fishing boat overturned for unknown reasons just off the coast of Marinella di Selinunte, dragging the people on board into the water. The boat had already set off from Tunisia towards Italy in the middle of the week, it was said.
The number of deaths could still rise
It was initially unclear how many people were originally on the boat and possibly went ashore uninjured. It is therefore also unclear whether more people may have died in the accident, so the number could possibly rise.
Many migrants repeatedly try to reach Lampedusa, Malta, Sicily or the Italian mainland via the central Mediterranean. This sometimes leads to devastating boat accidents, sometimes with many deaths. The Ministry of the Interior in Rome counted almost 142,400 people who reached Italy on boats this year – in the same period last year there were around 82,100 (as of October 27th).
