The migrant monitoring platform Alarm Phone announced that contact has been lost with 45 migrants who departed from the Tunisian coast last Wednesday night aboard an iron boat. The platform issued an urgent appeal for search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean, expressing deep concern for the migrants’ lives and solidarity with their families, who are awaiting any information about their loved ones amid difficult weather and navigation conditions. Despite heightened monitoring, such journeys continue in large numbers and often end in humanitarian tragedies beyond the capacity of rescue teams. According to official data from the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, the Mediterranean has claimed or caused the disappearance of 550 people since the beginning of this year, most of whom departed from Libya and Tunisia. However, humanitarian NGOs say the real figures may be more than double the official statistics, citing hundreds of undocumented deaths during Storm Harry, which struck the region last January—making the current year one of the deadliest in Mediterranean migration routes.

Source: Libya Observer March 16, 2026 13:30 UTC