At least 20 people died in a migrant shipwreck off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday and a UN agency said more could be missing as search operations were still underway.
Rescuers have found 20 bodies so far, while 60 survivors - 56 men and four women - have been brought to Lampedusa, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the Italian Red Cross.
The disaster, in this case involving people travelling from Libya, was the latest to befall migrants making the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe.
Since the beginning of this year, 675 people have died in the central Mediterranean while trying to make the crossing, said Filippo Ungaro, a UNHCR spokesperson in Italy.
An Italian law enforcement aircraft spotted a capsized boat with bodies in the water about 14 miles (23 km) off Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, triggering a rescue operation, a source close to the matter said.
The source said that based on initial accounts from the rescued migrants, they departed from the Tripoli area in Libya in the early morning aboard two boats. One of the boats began taking on water and they transferred to the other vessel, which later capsized in choppy water.
Initial UNHCR tallies indicated that as 92 to 97 people were in the group of migrants, meaning as many as 17 people were missing.
Cristina Palma, who works for the Italian Red Cross in Lampedusa, said in a video statement the survivors were in "decent" health but four of them had been hospitalised for checks.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government has vowed to block the migrant sea journeys from Africa and has passed measures against the human smugglers, including tougher jail terms, urging allies to do more to clamp down on the phenomenon.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on X that Wednesday's tragedy confirmed the need to prevent the illegal departures and to keep combatting migrant smugglers.
