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Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Forty-one migrants, including three children, died after a boat carrying them sank off Italy's Lampedusa Island in the Strait of Sicily. Four people, originally from the Ivory Coast and Guinea, survived the incident and told the Italian Coast Guard they had been traveling on 20-foot-long metal boat that left the Tunisian City of Sfax carrying about 45 people when it was capsized by a wave.
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The survivors said they were rescued by a cargo ship which transferred them to a Coast Guard ship.
The Italian Coast Guard on Sunday reported that two ships wrecked in the region but it wasn't immediately clear if the survivors had come from one of those vessels.
The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund said in a statement that a pregnant woman and a young child were among the dead from the two boats carrying migrants had sunk in rough seas.
"This time, a pregnant mother is among those who have lost their lives off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. An 18-month-old child traveling with their mother has also died," said UNICEF Italy Coordinator Nicola Dell'Arciprete.
She said in the first six months of 2023 at least 289 children have died or disappeared trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.
Dell'Arciprete urged "those in power to create safer pathways for migration and asylum in the European Union, and for coordinated search and rescue operations that help prevent deaths at sea."
Forty-three migrants drowned in July as a boat carrying more than 120 people from Libya attempted to cross the Mediterranean, sinking off of Tunisia.
In April an international rescue effort led by the Italian Coast Guard was mounted when at least 400 migrants were adrift on a boat and in danger of capsizing.
In 2022 1,368 people were either dead or missing in sea mishaps as over 105,000 thousand people made it to Italy via the Mediterranean Sea.
