Forty one migrants, including three children, have died in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa as they attempted to make the most deadly crossing for small boats in the world.
Four survivors of the shipwreck, one woman and three men from the Ivory Coast and Guinea, say the boat sank within six hours of departing Tunisia after being hit by a large wave. They swam for several hours, found an empty iron boat without an engine and were adrift for days before being rescued.
The UN’s latest figures show that 1.5 million migrants have crossed the central Mediterranean since 2014, of which over 17,000 have died or disappeared at sea. More than 1,800 have lost their lives crossing from North Africa to Europe just this year.
