At least 11 dead, 64 missing after 2 ships sink off the coast of Italy

Rome: Sixty-four people were missing at sea after a shipwreck off the Italian southern coast on Monday, while 11 were rescued and taken ashore to a Calabrian town, United Nations’ agencies said in a statement.

In a separate shipwreck, rescue workers found 10 bodies of suspected migrants trapped below the deck of a wooden boat off Italy’s tiny Lampedusa island, the German aid group Resqship wrote on Monday on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

In the first shipwreck, which took place about 200 kilometres off Calabria, a boat that had set off from Turkiye eight days earlier caught fire and overturned, the UN agencies said, citing survivors.

The search-and-rescue operation started following a Mayday call by a French boat, the Italian Coast Guard said in a statement.