Migrants News

Twelve migrants drowned in two separate incidents off the Greek islands of Lesbos and Samos in the northeastern Aegean Sea on Monday, after their boats capsized as the coast guard chased them, authorities said.Five men and one woman died after a speedboat carrying migrants from Turkey made a sudden manoeuvre and overturned roughly four nautical miles north of Samos, the Greek coast guard said.Fourteen men survived and a search-and-rescue operation was under way. Authorities arrested one of the survivors…

Spanish humanitarian rescue charity SMH has postponed its next mission in the central Mediterranean until 2027 due to soaring fuel costs, the group said on Wednesday, highlighting the financial pressures facing humanitarian efforts along one of the world's deadliest migration routes.SMH, which operates the Aita Mari, a former fishing vessel converted into a rescue ship in 2017, said on X the doubling of fuel prices had forced it to suspend operations in the central Mediterranean and shift activities to waters around Spain's Valencia coast…

German charity group Sea-Watch said on Tuesday it had rescued 28 migrants and recovered two bodies, including that of a child, following a shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia.The group's ship Aurora found five survivors and the dead bodies in a deflated rubber dinghy in the early hours of Tuesday, the charity said.It rescued another 23 survivors, including a toddler, from an offshore oil and gas platform where they had taken refuge after the shipwreck.Those rescued reported that at least six people…

The charity rescue ship, EMERGENCY, rescued 50 migrants from an wooden boat in international waters off Libya on Monday, while seven others were found dead, the charity said.Two people are in critical condition and suffering from suffocation and needed urgent medical evacuation, EMERGENCY said in a statement sent to Reuters, without giving further details.The survivors said they had left the Libyan coastal town of Zuwara on August 16 and were from Somalia and Egypt, the charity said.The group of migrants included 45 males, five females and 29 of them were unaccompanied minors, it added.(Reuter

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the IMO, and the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) have released a revised Rescue Guide, a tool to help all partners uphold the humanitarian and legal duties to rescue refugees and migrants in distress at sea and bring them to safety.The revised edition of Rescue at Sea: A guide to principles and practice in the context of refugee and migrant movements comes as tragic shipwrecks continue to highlight the urgent need for stronger collective action to prevent further loss of life among people fleeing danger or seeking better prospects.

Four migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean more than five days after the boat supposed to carry them to Europe capsized off Libya, three Libyan sources and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Monday.However, 10 migrants were confirmed to have died in the disaster off Tobruk in eastern Libya, and 31 were still missing. Six bodies were recovered on Saturday after washing ashore.The IOM said search efforts were continuing. The migrants are from Egypt and Sudan…

Four people died after a small boat carrying migrants seeking to reach Britain sank in the Channel and a search and rescue operation was underway, French local authorities said on Thursday."A taxi-boat sinking occurred today. The situation is still being assessed and remains subject to change," local French authorities in Calais said in a press statement.In the past year, traffickers have taken to motoring dinghies along stretches of the northern French and Belgian coasts picking migrants up along the shore.

Two merchant vessels near the Italian coast recovered the bodies of two migrants and rescued 32 survivors from a boat trying to cross to Europe from Libya on Easter weekend, rescue charities said, citing the survivors as saying 71 others were lost at sea.The victims were transferred to an Italian coast guard patrol boat and brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa, said the groups Mediterranea Saving Humans and Sea-Watch.Italy's interior ministry said it had no comment on the report. The Italian Coast Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Italy's cabinet approved a bill on Wednesday authorising naval blockades to halt migrant boats during periods of "exceptional pressure" at the country's borders, a government source said, further tightening measures against irregular arrivals.Since taking office in late 2022, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has moved to speed up repatriations of unsuccessful asylum seekers and introduced stiffer jail terms for human smugglers, in a bid to stem sea crossings.The move comes after the European Parliament this week approved changes to EU asylum rules, responding to pressure from member st

Fifteen migrants died after their boat collided with a Greek coast guard vessel, capsized and sank off the island of Chios in the Aegean Sea late on Tuesday, the coast guard said, in one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in Greece in years.The incident occurred after a migrant boat sailing towards Chios with its navigation lights switched off ignored signals from a coast guard patrol vessel and changed course, the coast guard said in a statement.All those on board were thrown into the sea a few miles off the Turkish coast, it said.

A migrant has been rescued and 50 others are feared drowned after a boat sank in the Mediterranean, officials said on Sunday.The man had been in the sea for 24 hours and said he believed everyone else on the vessel had died, according to the Alarm Phone group which runs an emergency hotline for migrants.The boat had come from Tunisia, it added, a common departure point for migrants risking the dangerous journey to reach Europe.The man was rescued by a merchant ship off Tunisia and brought to Malta for medical treatment, Malta's armed forces said.

A boat carrying members of the Rohingya community from Myanmar has sunk near the Thai-Malaysian border, with hundreds missing, seven dead and 13 rescued, the Malaysian maritime agency said on Sunday.Rescuers were combing an area of 170 square nautical miles near Langkawi Island on Saturday after a boat with 300 people on board left Myanmar's Rakhine state three days earlier, said the maritime agency head for the area Romli Mustafa.Images from the agency showed one survivor covered with a sheet and another on a stretcher.Myanmar's impoverished Rakhine state has suffered years of conflict…

A migrant boat carrying around 35 people sailing from Libya capsized in the central Mediterranean leaving one confirmed dead and two dozen missing, UNICEF country coordinator for Italy said on Sunday.The rescue operation was carried out on Friday off the coast of Italy's Lampedusa Island by the Italian Coast Guard, which saved 11 migrants, including four children travelling alone, and recovered the body of a pregnant woman, UNICEF's Nicola Dell'Arciprete said.The survivors and the body were brought to Lampedusa, while the remaining passengers remain unaccounted for.The boat capsized after two

At least 26 people died in a migrant shipwreck off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday and 60 were brought ashore, the coastguard said, adding that the death toll was still provisional amid ongoing search operations.The disaster, in this case involving people travelling from Libya, is the latest to befall migrants making the perilous Mediterranean crossing from Africa to Europe.An Italian law enforcement aircraft spotted a capsized boat with bodies in the water about 14 miles (23 km) off Lampedusa on Wednesday morning…

At least 54 migrants died when a boat carrying around 150 people sank off Yemen's coast in bad weather on Sunday, with dozens still unaccounted for, health officials said.The boat capsized off the Ahwar district in Yemen's southern Abyan province on the Arabian Sea, security sources said.Abdul Qadir Bajameel, a provincial health official, said 10 of the around 150 people on board were rescued - nine Ethiopians and one Yemeni - but dozens remained missing. Two medics said rescuers…

Greece will deploy two frigates and one more vessel off Libya's territorial waters to deter migrants from arriving at its southern islands of Crete and Gavdos, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday.Mitsotakis did not elaborate on the role of the vessels or explain what they would do, but said the move would be in coordination with Libyan authorities and the rest of the European forces operating in the area.Sea arrivals from northeastern Libya of migrants trying to cross to Europe mainly from the Middle East and North Africa…

At least six people died when a migrant boat bound for Spain's Canary Islands capsized off the island of El Hierro as rescuers were escorting it to port, regional emergency services said on Wednesday.The open-topped boat, which according to state broadcaster TVE was laden with around 180 people, went down as it neared La Restinga harbour on El Hierro, the archipelago's smallest island.A spokesperson for the islands' maritime rescue service said a rescue vessel was escorting the boat to the harbour and as it approached, many of its passengers appeared to rush to one side of the precarious vesse

Tunisia's coast guard on Monday recovered the bodies of eight African migrants after their boat sank off the country's coast as it sailed towards Europe, a security official told Reuters, adding that 29 other people were rescued.The boat sank in waters off the city of Abwabed near Sfax, a departure point often used by African migrants.Search operations were underway for possible missing persons, said Houssem Eddine Jebabli, an official in the national guard.Tunisia is grappling with an unprecedented migration crisis and has replaced Libya as a major departure point for both Tunisians and other

Spain's coast guard rescued on Sunday (April 13) 50 migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands on an inflatable boat, the Spanish Red Cross said.The migrants, which included 45 men, four women and one minor, were taken to El Rosario port on Fuerteventura island.The boat was located 90 miles (144 kilometres) off the island of Lanzarote.

At least seven migrants died, including one boy, one girl and two women, when their boat sank on Thursday (April 3) off the Greek island of Lesbos, Greece's coastguard said.The boat was detected by a patrolling coastguard vessel at about 2 a.m. local time (2300 GMT on Wednesday) north of Lesbos.So far 23 migrants have been rescued and a search and rescue operation was still ongoing, a coastguard official said. It was not immediately clear how many people may have been on the boat.Greece…

A charity vessel has rescued more than 30 migrants including two children who had been stranded for four days on a gas platform in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia, the Sea-Watch organization said on Tuesday."This morning, Sea-Watch's fast ship Aurora left (the Italian island of) Lampedusa to rescue them.

A Greek Ombudsman has recommended disciplinary action against eight coastguard officers for alleged dereliction of duty in one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks off Greece in which hundreds died in 2023.The inquiry is the first to conclude on the circumstances surrounding the shipwreck off the southwestern coastal town of Pylos on June 14, 2023, which sank in plain sight of Greek coastguard authorities with about 750 people on board.The trawler, named Ariana, had left Libya…

An Italian navy ship carrying 49 migrants picked up in international waters arrived in Albania on Tuesday, amid a new attempt by Italy to push ahead with a legally contested plan to relocate migrants to the neighbouring country.The navy ship Cassiopea with the migrants reached the Albanian port of Shengjin early on Tuesday, according to a Reuters witness.