11 dead and dozens missing after two shipping accidents off the coast of Italy | World news

Two of the 51 people rescued between Libya and Lampedusa were unconscious and “had to be freed with an axe,” a German aid organization said.

At least eleven people have died and dozens are missing after two ships sank off the coast of southern Italy.

A rescue ship belonging to a German aid organisation has rescued 51 suspected migrants from a sinking wooden ship in the first of two shipping accidents.

RESQSHIP said two of the 51 were unconscious and had to be “freed with an axe.”

Ten bodies were found on the flooded lower deck of the wooden ship near the island of Lampedusa, the organization added. No one is believed to be missing.

“Our thoughts are with their families. We are angry and sad,” RESQSHIP wrote on X.

The people on board come from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Organization for Migration and UNICEF said in a joint statement.

The survivors were handed over to the Italian coast guard and brought ashore, RESQSHIP said.

His own ship, the Nadir, towed the wooden boat with the bodies of the dead to the island of Lampedusa.

The second shipwreck occurred about 200 kilometers east of the Italian region of Calabria after a yacht that had set off from Turkey eight days earlier caught fire and capsized, UN agencies said.

The Italian coast guard said twelve migrants had been intercepted.

One of the women, who presumably fell into the water, died immediately after landing.

The condition of the others is serious, said Vittorio Zito, mayor of the town of Roccella.

Survivors said 66 people were missing, including 26 children, “some of them very young,” Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Roccella told Sky News.

Entire families from Afghanistan probably lost their lives, the doctors’ organization added.

MSF said the yacht may have been flooded for three or four days and that the people on board were not wearing life jackets.

Some passing ships did not stop to help, survivors reported.

The migrants involved in the shipping accident off Calabria came from Iran, Iraq and Syria, the agencies added.

A French ship heard a Mayday call in the Italian search and rescue area.

The Italian Coast Guard sent several units to the scene of the accident and brought twelve people, including a pregnant woman and two children, to Roccella.

Two Coast Guard patrol boats are searching for survivors and an aircraft has also been deployed.

The EU border protection agency Frontex is also involved.