According to the IOM, a merchant vessel and a tugboat managed to save 32 people, and the Italian coast guard transferred them to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The incident came a week after the Italian coast guard recovered 19 bodies and rescued 58 people while intercepting a dinghy filled with migrants about 150 kilometers from Lampedusa.
The IOM said that the start of 2026 has been the deadliest start to a year for migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea since 2014, with at least 990 deaths recorded so far this year. In the Central Mediterranean alone, 765 people have died in 2026, a 150% more than in the same period last year. IOM Director General Amy Pope said the agency is seeing a growing number of migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan.
