According to reports in the Italian press, a metal boat carrying around 53 migrants set out from the Tunisian port of Sfax and sank just off the coast of Lampedusa on Monday (November 20) in the afternoon.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, speaking in parliament on Tuesday (November 21), said that "we rescued 42 people. But a two-year-old girl unfortunately died on the rescue vessel shortly before arriving at port."

The girl had been traveling with her parents, according to ANSA. The parents are believed to be two Guinean nationals who are currently at the hotspot in the Imbriacola district being assisted by Italian Red Cross psychologists. They have already identified their daughter's body and an autopsy will be carried out.

The rescued migrants were from Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Konakry and Mali, reported the Italian news portal TP24.

The Italian coast guard, which carried out the rescue operation, published a video of that and a second rescue operation, which took place off the coast of Lampedusa on Monday night.

'Searches are ongoing'

The coast guard confirmed that a search was continuing for at least eight people reported missing. Planes and ships from the coast guard, the Italian border and tax police (Guardia di Finanza) and the European border force Frontex have been deployed. However, Vatican news on Tuesday reported that no one had yet been found.

The coast guard said in a press release that it had been alerted on Monday afternoon to the presence of migrants on top of cliffs at Capo Ponenente on Lampedusa. Unable to reach them by land, it sent out two motor boats.

They managed to save 42 people and a girl who was unconscious. "Medical personnel tried everything to resuscitate her, but unfortunately we were unable to," stated the press release. She was pronounced dead shortly before arriving at port.

Two children thought to be among missing

The Italian AGI news agency reported that, according to survivors’ accounts, two children are thought to be among those missing.

On the regional Italian news portal agrigento notizie, two Lampedusan fisherman, Giuseppe and Salvatore Del Volgo, recount that they also picked up two young migrants, who they believe to be Ivorian, from the cliffs with their fishing boat.

According to the two fishermen, the two had also been on board the boat which had set off from Sfax, and most of whose passengers had managed to get onto the cliffs at Capo Ponente.

"We were fishing off the north of the island and we’d cast our nets," explained Del Volgo to agrigento notizie. "Then on the cliffs of Capo Ponente, we saw a group of migrants, maybe ten or 15 people, so we called the Carabinieri. They told us not to intervene as they were sending motor boats, so we continued on our way," recounted Del Volgo.

'We couldn't just leave them there, they would never have survived'

"A bit further on, even further north, we saw these other two people on some rocks. When they saw our boat, they jumped in the sea to try and swim to us," said Del Volgo. "We couldn’t just leave them there, they would never have survived. We pulled them on board and put them near the engine where it was a bit warmer and covered them up, because that was all we had on board. Then we headed for Cala Pisana. These two were really exhausted, they were thirsty and hungry, they communicated with us using gestures."

The two fishermen, father and son, believe the two young migrants they found were brothers. They gave them the water they had on board and the bread they had left, they said.

Salvatore Del Volgo, the father and commander on board the fishing boat, says they have sometimes seen other boats with migrants in the distance when they were out fishing, but they have never been called upon to save anyone, until now.

One of the young men was in quite a bad condition, recounted Del Volgo. Their boat, which is pretty small and was heavy with fishing nets, took three quarters of an hour to reach the port at Cala Pisana. Once there, they called an ambulance. Del Volgo told another local newspaper Agrigento Notizie that if they hadn’t managed to rescue the two young men, he doubted they would have survived the night. "In the conditions they were in, they wouldn’t have made it through the night, it would have been difficult for them to see in another dawn."

The two 20-year-olds rescued by the fishermen were taken to Lampedusa's health clinic, reported ANSA.

Fishing boat carrying 576 migrants

Also on Monday evening, a fishing boat got into trouble in the Italian Search and Rescue (SAR) zone, stated the coast guard. The ship was carrying 576 migrants on board. A video showed two coast guard vessels guiding the large metal fishing boat into port.

"Marine conditions didn’t allow us to transfer the migrants from the fishing vessel at sea," the coast guard said.

Italian news agency ADNkronos reported that 11 different migrant boats landed on Lampedusa during the course of Monday evening, bringing at least 800 people to the small Sicilian island.

More than 150,000 (150,177) migrants have made it to Italy by boat across the Mediterranean since the beginning of the year, according to Italian Interior Ministry data, last updated on November 21.

1,124 arrived on Monday

According to the ministry’s data, a total of 1,124 migrants arrived on Lampedusa on November 20. The arrivals marked a small peak after a few days of relative calm. Last week, on November 14 and 15, more than 1,000 migrants arrived on two consecutive days (1,083 on November 14 and 1,264 on November 15).

The UN migration agency, IOM, has reported that around 2,200 people have died or gone missing on the central Mediterranean route since the beginning of the year. The actual numbers of deaths is thought to be much higher, since many set off without informing people of their whereabouts and disappear without trace.

With Reuters, ANSA