Survivors said some 56 people were in the dinghy when it departed from the Tunisian port of Sfax on Monday, UNHCR said.

The boat started to deflate a few hours later. The people on board were from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Mali, the UNHCR said.

The U.N. Missing Migrant Project puts the number of dead and missing in the perilous central Mediterranean at over 24,506 from 2014 to 2024, many of them lost at sea. The project says the number may be greater as many deaths go unrecorded.

Migrants arrive on an Italian Coast Guard vessel after being rescued at sea, on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italy, on September 18, 2023. (Reuters/Yara Nardi/File Photo)

So far this year, 8,963 migrants have arrived in Italy, according to Interior Ministry figures updated Wednesday, a 4% increase over the same period last year.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s center-right government has pushed for economic agreements with northern African countries aimed at preventing departures. Speaking to lawmakers this week, Meloni credited the deals with a nearly 60% drop in migrant arrivals in Italy last year to 66,317 from 157,651 in 2023.

She said 1,695 people were dead or missing at sea in 2024, compared with 2,526 a year earlier.

“What do these numbers mean? They tell us that reducing the departures, and curbing the traffickers’ business, is the only way to reduce the number of migrants who lose their lives trying to reach Italy and Europe,” she said.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian rescue group Emergency rescued 35 people in the Libyan search-and-rescue area on Monday and was ordered to bring them to the northern city of La Spezia to disembark, in keeping with the Meloni government practice of assigning ports far from the rescue area.

“This means three days more to arrive, and above all it means to increase the suffering of the shipwrecked people,” said Anabel Montes Mier, who was running the mission.