Over 2,200 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2024, with nearly 1,700 people dying along the central Mediterranean route, said today the UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia Regina de Dominicis, quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA.
De Dominicis, who is the Special Coordinator for Refugees and Migrants in Europe, said that hundreds of children and teenagers were among the victims, BTA specifies.
The data was published after the shipwreck on New Year's Eve, in which about 20 people who had set off from Libya were declared missing.
The seven survivors, including an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother, were taken to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, and later transferred to the reception center in Agrigento.