Forty-one migrants have been killed in a shipwreck off Italy’s Lampedusa island, according to reports.
The RAI and ANSA news agency reported on Wednesday that four people who survived the shipwreck told rescuers that they were on a boat that had set off from Sfax in Tunisia.
The survivors, three men and a woman, said the vessel had sunk on its way to Italy’s shores.
They were taken to Lampedusa on Wednesday morning by the Italian Coast Guard after first being rescued by a cargo ship. The four survivors are originally from the Ivory Coast and Guinea.
They told the Coast Guard that 45 of them left Sfax, including three children, at 10am on Thursday, ANSA reports.
But a few hours later the boat capsized due to a large wave and all migrants on board ended up in the sea, according to the survivors.
Only 15 wore a life jacket, but they too died, the survivors said, according to ANSA.
Reportedly no bodies or the vessel have been found.
Alessandra Filograno, a spokeswoman for the Italian Red Cross, confirmed four survivors arrived at the Lampedusa centre on Wednesday morning - two men, a woman and an unaccompanied minor.
It follows two other shipwrecks off the Italian island on Saturday that left a woman and her infant dead while 57 migrants had to be rescued from the water.
It is unclear if the news given by Ansa is linked to the two shipwrecks over the weekend.
Separately, Tunisian authorities said on Monday that they had recovered 11 bodies from a shipwreck near Sfax on Sunday, with 44 migrants still missing from that sinking.
The waters in the Strait of Sicily have been extremely rough in recent days, making it hard for Italian Coast Guard boats to reach stranded migrants.
The island, which is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland, is a frequent destination for migrant smugglers and has seen its migrant holding center repeatedly overcrowded with new arrivals this summer.
More than 2,000 people have arrived in Lampedusa in the last few days after being rescued at sea by Italian patrol boats and NGO groups.
Italy has seen around 93,700 migrant arrivals by sea so far this year, according to interior ministry data last updated on Monday, compared to 44,700 in the same period of 2022.
