Dozens die in shipwrecks off Tunisia as 2025 is already deadly for migrants in Mediterranean

(CNN) — At least 27 people have died after two boats carrying migrants sunk off the coast of Tunisia on Wednesday, according to state broadcaster Tunisia TV.

The vessels were carrying Africans from sub-Saharan countries, Tunisia TV reported. Some 83 people were rescued three miles off Alataya in Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands, where the boats sank, it said.

The Red Cross told CNN Thursday that there have been at least four shipwrecks in the area in the last week, claiming 84 lives in total. Of these disasters, three boats set off from Tunisia and one departed from Libya, it said.

This comes after UNICEF announced on Wednesday that more than 2,200 people died in the Mediterranean during 2024.

This figure includes “hundreds of children, who make up one in five of all people migrating through the Mediterranean,” the UNICEF statement said. The majority of these children are fleeing violent conflict and poverty, it added.

Just hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, a boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, UNICEF said, leaving more than 20 people missing, including women and children. Among the seven survivors is an 8-year-old child whose mother is unaccounted for, it said.

Lampedusa is an Italian island in the Mediterranean, far closer to Tunisia’s coast than either mainland Italy or the island of Sicily. Many in Northern Africa aiming to reach Europe travel to Lampedusa, as it requires a shorter journey than reaching the mainland continent.

In total, at least 31,184 migrants have either died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which last updated its figures on December 31, 2024.

Most of these incidents took place on the Central Mediterranean route, where migrants attempted to cross from North Africa to Italy or Malta, the IOM said.

A total of 66,317 migrants landed in Italy in 2024, the Italian government said on Thursday, down from 157,651 in 2023 and 105,131 in 2022. Most of these migrants were reported to be from Bangladesh, Syria or Tunisia, the report said.

Despite this, deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean over the last few years have stayed roughly consistent, according to the IOM. Some 3,155 people died or went missing in 2023, the IOM said, with the same happening to 2,411 people in 2022.

‘Europe’s borders continue to kill’

The support service Alarm Phone told CNN on Thursday that “over the last days and weeks, many deadly incidents occurred along the migration routes in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.”

“While people in Europe and elsewhere enjoy the holiday season and end-of-year festivities, Europe’s borders continue to kill. We mourn all those who lost their lives and stand in solidarity with their loved ones,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement.

Separately, UNICEF called on governments to prioritize safeguarding children, including through “coordinated search and rescue operations, safe disembarkation, community-based reception, and access to asylum services.”

“Governments must address the root causes of migration and support the integration of families into host communities, ensuring children’s rights are protected at every stage of their journey,” it said.

Italy’s hard-right administration is trying out a number of ways to reduce the amount of migrants seeking refuge at its shores. In October, 16 migrants that traveled to Italy were sent to centers in Albania for processing.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) called the opening of the centers a “dark day for the EU’s asylum and migration policies” and said it hoped that the Albanian protocol would not be a blueprint for others.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.