A two-year-old girl has drowned, and eight other people are missing after a migrant boat capsized near a reef off Lampedusa island.
ADVERTISEMENTA small boat crammed with migrants capsised off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday evening, killing a 2-year-old girl and leaving at least eight people missing, rescuers said.
The Italian coast guard and fishermen who were in the area when the boat hit some rocks before capsising saved 43 other people. Most of those rescued were from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau and Mali and had departed from Sfax, in Tunisia.
Survivors told rescuers that at least eight people who were aboard were missing, including two children.
Meanwhile, a fishing boat with 400 migrants onboard disembarked at the commercial port of Lampedusa, after being escorted by the local coast guard.
That boat brought the total number of arrivals to the island on Monday to 800, in 11 different groups.
Last week, over 1,200 rescued migrants arrived on the tiny island in just 26 hours.
Lampedusa is a small stretch of land and the southernmost spot of Italy. Mass arrivals of migrants over the years have often brought its services to the brink of collapse. The local facility on the island has enough capacity for only 400 people.