Photo credit: VOA
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it was “deeply concerned” by the reports that hundreds of migrants may be missing or dead following reports of deadly shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean in recent days.
France 24 reports that in a statement, the organization said, “Several boats are believed to have been involved over the past 10 days with preliminary information suggesting that hundreds of people may be missing at sea or feared dead.”
The agency warned that severe weather was significantly hampering search and rescue operations.
IOM spokesman Jorge Galindo told ADP there had been “three shipwrecks reported on January 23 and 25”, with potentially at least 104 deaths.
The reported wrecks involved boats that were believed to have departed from Tunisia and Libya, according to Merna Abdelazim, a data analyst wit the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project.
While IOM said it was still verifying the information, it said three deaths had been confirmed in Lampedusa, Italy, following a search and rescue operation involving a boat that had left from Sfax in Tunisia.
“Among the victims are twin girls, approximately one year old, who died of hypothermia.
And survivors from the same operation have reported that another boat that departed from the same location at the same time as theirs had never arrived.
The agency was also investigating reports of nine missing boats that had departed Tunisia between January 14 and 21, with a total of around 380 people onboard, he said.
“In just the first weeks of 2026, hundreds of people are already feared to be missing,” the IOM statement said, warning that “the final toll may be significantly higher”.
