Two migrants dead, 30 missing after shipwrecks off Italian coast

At least two people have died and more than 30 are missing after two ships carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the UN's migration agency said on Sunday.

The two boats had set off from the port of Sfax in Tunisia carrying 48 and 42 people respectively.

Italian coastguards recovered the bodies of a woman from the Ivory Coast and her one-year-old baby.

Italian authorities said they were investigating the shipwrecks.

Coastguards rescued 57 migrants when the vessels sank on Saturday, about 23 nautical miles (46 km) south-west of Lampedusa.

Police chief Emanuele Ricifari, who is in charge of the investigation, told local media the traffickers would have known that rough seas were forecast.

"Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is an unscrupulous criminal lunatic," Mr Ricifari said.

In recent days, Italian patrol boats and charity groups have rescued another 2,000 people who have arrived on the island.

But they have said stormy weather and poor quality of the boats continue to complicate the situation.

Mr Ricifari, urging the traffickers to stop, said: "Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let's hope they stop. It's sending them to slaughter with this sea."

NGOs say Italy's far-right government has made their task more difficult by passing laws that have the effect of forcing rescue ships to use faraway ports.

Charities have warned that this increases their navigation costs and reduces the amount of time ships can patrol the areas of the Mediterranean where such disasters are common.

The Italian Interior ministry said migration figures by sea had doubled this year to 92,000, compared with 42,600 recorded in the same period in 2022.