Italy

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Following two shipwrecks off the coast of southern Italy on Monday (June 17), 11 migrants died and 64 were reported missing, according to United Nations agencies, the Italian Coast Guard, and a German charity.

Ten dead were discovered stuck in the lower deck of the sinking wooden boat that was rescued by the German relief organization RESQSHIP, which runs the Nadir rescue ship. The group rescued 51 people from the sinking boat, two of them were unconscious.

"Our thoughts are with their families. We are angry and sad," it wrote on X.

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According to RESQSHIP, on Monday morning, Nadir was on its way to the island of Lampedusa, towing the wooden boat containing the dead and the survivors were turned over to the Italian coast guard and brought ashore.

The migrants were from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, according to a joint statement from the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

According to UN authorities, the second shipwreck occurred some 200 kilometres (125 miles) east of the Italian area of Calabria. The boat had started from Turkey eight days before it caught fire and overturned.

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It was reported that 64 individuals were reported missing at sea and that 11 of them had been recovered by the Italian coast guard and brought ashore to the Calabrian town of Roccella Ionica.

The coast guard earlier said that, with the assistance of the EU border agency Frontex, it was searching for an undefined number of missing migrants.

According to the UN, the migrants in the second shipwreck were from Iran, Syria, and Iraq. The IOM claims that since 2014, over 23,500 migrants—including 749 this year alone—have died or disappeared in the central Mediterranean, making it one of the riskiest migration routes in the world. Earlier this month, 11 bodies were retrieved from the water off the coast of Libya.

(With inputs from agencies)