More than 250 migrants are feared dead after a boat carrying some
300 people sank in the early hours of the morning, some 40 miles
off the island of Lampedusa.

Forty seven survivors were rescued at sea by the Italian Coast
Guard and three by a local Italian fishing boat.

The vessel, which was laden beyond capacity, had left the Libyan
coast with migrants and asylum seekers from Somalia, Nigeria,
Bangladesh, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and Sudan. Some 40 women and 5
children were on board. Only two women survived the shipwreck.

The survivors were transferred to Lampedusa. They told IOM
officers who are providing them with first aid and counselling that
the boat sank in rough seas.

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They say that when rescuers arrived, the boat was already
sinking. Survivors managed to swim towards the approaching Coast
Guard ship. Many drowned because they couldn't swim or were dragged
down by desperate fellow passengers.

"The survivors are all in a state of shock," says IOM's Simona
Moscarelli. “One man told me he had lost his one year old
son. One of the two surviving women told me how she had lost her
husband."

The migrants have been transferred to the Loran base, a facility
where the Italian authorities are sheltering migrants coming from
Libya, in order not to mix them with the migrants arriving from
Tunisia.

Since the beginning of February, the island of Lampedusa has
been overwhelmed by the arrival of more than 20,000 migrants. The
majority of them are Tunisian coming from the Tunisian port of
Zarzis, Djerba and Sfax. Over the past ten days, more than 2,000
mostly African migrants and asylum seekers have landed on the
island after having sailed from the Libyan coast.

Since 2006, IOM has been providing assistance to migrants in
Lampedusa as part of a project funded by the Italian Government.
IOM works alongside UNCHR, Save the Children and Italian Red Cross
to monitor reception assistance and to provide legal counseling to
migrants who have arrived on the island.

For more information, please contact Flavio Di Giacomo 

IOM Rome

Tel: +39 347 089 89 96

Email "mailto:fdigiacomo@iom.int">fdigiacomo@iom.int

Jean-Philippe Chauzy

IOM Geneva

Tel: +41 22 717 93 61 or 41 79 285 43 66

Email: "mailto:jpchauzy@iom.int">jpchauzy@iom.int