Up to 380 feared drowned attempting Mediterranean crossing during Cyclone Harry

Italy's coastguard said up to 380 people may have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean last week as Cyclone Harry battered southern Italy and Malta, and Maltese authorities confirmed a shipwreck with the loss of 50 lives. One person survived and was hospitalised in Malta.

The survivor was reportedly at sea for about 24 hours clinging to wreckage before being rescued by a merchant ship; he told Alarm Phone that the vessel had departed Tunisia on 20 January and he believed everyone else on board had died. Separately, Italy’s unit for UNICEF’s migrant and refugee response said one-year-old twin girls from Guinea are presumed to have died off the coast of Lampedusa after an overcrowded boat was battered by the cyclone.

The coastguard estimates that 380 others who set sail from Tunisia during the storm might also have drowned and said it has been searching for eight vessels launched by people smugglers from the Tunisian port of Sfax over the past 10 days. Italy’s interior ministry reported 66,296 people arrived by boat on Italian coasts in 2025, a slight dip on the previous year and roughly half the number in 2023, when the government reinforced or enacted deals with Libya and Tunisia.

Fewer NGO rescue ships are operating in the Mediterranean after an Italian government crackdown that included fines and a mandate to disembark rescued people at more distant ports.

Key Topics

World, Mediterranean Sea, Cyclone Harry, Italian Coastguard, Malta, Tunisia