Italy coastguard recovers six bodies after shipwreck

Italy's coastguard said Wednesday it had recovered six bodies after a migrant boat sank this week off the southern coast with more than 60 people reported missing, including many children.

Twelve people were rescued after the sailing boat sank around 120 nautical miles off the coast of Calabria overnight Sunday-Monday, although one of them died after disembarking.

Italy's ANSA news agency reported that she was a 25-year-old woman of Iraqi origin.

The coastguard said Wednesday it continued to search the area around the semi-submerged boat, which is still visible, on sea and in the air.

"Following the searches carried out so far, six lifeless bodies have been recovered," it said.

ANSA said they were four men and two women.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has been helping the survivors, who reported that 66 people had been missing after the shipwreck, "including at least 26 children, some of them a few months old".

Shakilla Mohammadi, cultural mediator for the medical charity, on Tuesday said those rescued were "traumatised, their pain tangible".

"I talked to one young man who had lost his girlfriend," she said.

"Entire families from Afghanistan are believed to have died.

"They left Turkey eight days ago and had been taking on water for three or four days.

"They told us that they were travelling without life jackets and that some boats did not stop to help them."

Ten bodies were found in a separate shipwrecked migrant boat on Monday off the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to German aid group ResQship.

Some 3,155 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea last year, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.

More than 1,000 have died or are missing so far this year.

The Central Mediterranean -- the area between the coast of North Africa and Italy and Malta -- is the deadliest known migration route in the world, accounting for 80 percent of the deaths and disappearances in the Med.

Many migrants set off from Tunisia or Libya by boat for Europe, with Italy often their first port of call.

Arrivals have dropped considerably since the start of the year, with 24,100 people landing in Italy so far, compared to more than 57,500 in the same period in 2023, according to the interior ministry.