At least 41 migrants have been confirmed dead in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Four survivors of the accident told rescuers on Wednesday that they were on a boat that had set off from Sfax in Tunisia and sank on its way to Italy.
The survivors – a 13-year-old boy, two men and a woman – who were from Ivory Coast and Guinea reached Lampedusa on Wednesday.
They managed to survive the shipwreck by floating on inner tubes.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said more than 1,800 people have lost their lives crossing from North Africa to Europe this year.
The IOM spokesman, Flavio Di Giacomo, told journalists the migrants who embarked on such a risky trip in the attempts to reach Europe would have little chance of survival.
“Sub-Saharan migrants [leaving from Tunisia] are forced to use these low-cost iron boats which break after 20 or 30 hours of navigation. With this kind of sea, these boats capsize easily,” he stated.
