Up to 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week as Cyclone Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, the Italian coastguard has said, as a shipwreck with the loss of 50 lives was confirmed by Maltese authorities.
Just one person, who was hospitalised in Malta, survived the shipwreck, which happened on Friday.
The man was at sea for 24 hours, reportedly clinging to the wreckage of the vessel, before being rescued by a merchant ship. He said he believed everyone else on the boat, which had departed from Tunisia on 20 January, had died, according to Alarm Phone, an organisation running a hotline for people in distress at sea.
In a separate tragedy last week, one-year-old twin girls from Guinea are presumed to have died off the coast of the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after an overcrowded boat they were travelling on was battered by Cyclone Harry, according to the Italy unit for Unicef’s migrant and refugee response.
Italy’s coastguard estimates that 380 others who set sail from Tunisia during the cyclone, which generated huge waves in the Mediterranean, might also have drowned. The coastguard has been searching for eight vessels that had been launched by people smugglers from the Tunisian port city of Sfax during the past 10 days despite the treacherous conditions.
According to figures from Italy’s interior ministry, 66,296 people arrived by boat on Italian coastlines during 2025, representing a slight dip on the previous year but about half the number of arrivals in 2023, when Italy’s far-right government either reinforced or enacted deals with Libya and Tunisia to stem the flow.
There are fewer NGO rescue ships operating in the Mediterranean owing to a crackdown by the Italian government, including fines and a mandate to disembark people rescued at distant ports rather than bringing them to ones that are closer, such as in Sicily.
Despite the hardline measures, people still attempt the high-risk journey from north Africa in search of refuge in Europe.
Italy is one of the main landing points, with the central Mediterranean route considered one of the world’s most dangerous. The UN’s International Organization for Migration has registered at least 25,600 deaths and disappearances among people attempting the crossing since 2014. Most of the deaths or disappearances are attributed to boats departing from either Tunisia or Libya.
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