MILAN (AP) – The U.N. refugee agency says that survivors of a shipwreck off Libya have reported at least seven people, including three children, died when the small wooden boat carrying 27 people, mostly Syrian refugees, capsized.
A Spanish aid group recovered five bodies, including two Syrian girls aged 8 months and 5 years, during the rescue Thursday.
UNHCR representative Medea Savary said that survivors arriving in the Sicilian port of Trapani on Saturday reported that a woman and another child also died, but the bodies couldn’t be recovered.
Survivors said that the boat began taking on water a few hours after departing Libya, and eventually capsized.
The Migrant Offshore Aid Station, MOAS, brought the five bodies to Trapani, along with 304 people rescued in recent days.