At least two people, including a child, have died and six others are missing after a migrant boat sank off the Tunisian coast near the Gulf of Gabes, according to European humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch.
Sea-Watch said its rescue vessel, Aurora, located a deflated rubber dinghy early Tuesday carrying five survivors and the bodies of two victims.
Another 23 survivors, including a toddler and five women, reportedly escaped the wreck by reaching the Hasdrubal gas platform, about 100 kilometres (62 miles) off the Tunisian coast.
According to accounts gathered from survivors by Sea-Watch rescuers, at least six people remain missing. Three children from the same family are among those unaccounted for.
Rescuers said it was still unclear whether the body of the child recovered from the dinghy was one of the three missing children.
The Aurora crew reached the deflated dinghy at about 4 a.m., provided the survivors with life jackets and brought them aboard the rescue vessel.
The migrants and refugees rescued were from Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Pakistan and Nigeria.
The Aurora has been assigned the Italian island of Lampedusa as its port of disembarkation and was expected to arrive there on Tuesday afternoon.
It remained unclear when the migrant boat departed or whether it had set out from Tunisia or Libya.
Data from the United Nations International Organization for Migration showed that 21,897 people had crossed the central Mediterranean to Italy, mainly from Libya and Tunisia, between January 1 and the latest reporting period in 2026.
The IOM recorded 997 deaths on the route during the period.
Although arrivals during the corresponding period in 2025 were more than twice as high, with about 49,000 people reaching Italy by sea, the number of recorded deaths was lower at 855.
