41 dead in migrant shipwreck off Italy’s Lampedusa island

ROME: Forty-one migrants have been killed in a shipwreck off Italy’s Lampedusa island, the ANSA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing accounts from survivors.

Ansa said four people who survived the shipwreck told rescuers that they were on a boat that had set off from Sfax in Tunisia and sank on its way to Italy’s shores.

On Monday, at least 11 migrants have died in a shipwreck off Tunisia's coast and 44 others are missing, a judicial sources said, revising an earlier toll of four fatalities.

"Seven new bodies have been recovered on Sunday evening," said Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the court in Sfax, Tunisia's second city near the site of the sinking that took place over the weekend in the Mediterranean Sea.

Two have been rescued out of the 57 people aboard the boat, all from sub-Saharan African countries, Masmoudi said, adding that the authorities were searching for the missing migrants.