Dozens of migrants are missing and may be dead after a boat they were trying to cross from Libya to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, two charities said on Sunday, cited by Reuters.

Mediterranea Saving Humans, a migrant rescue group, said on Twitter that the vessel capsized early Sunday morning 110 miles northwest of Benghazi, according to multiple sources.

Another similar structure, Alarm Phone, which takes calls from shipwrecks, said via the same social network that it had alerted authorities since Saturday, stressing that the ship was in distress and the 47 migrants on board needed to be rescued urgently. “We are shocked. According to various sources, dozens of people drowned on this vessel that suffered an accident,” the organization said.

The Italian news agency ANSA, quoted by Agerpres, records Alarm Phone’s accusation that the authorities in Rome deliberately delayed the rescue mission, and the response of Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani: “I am convinced, knowing the coast guard, the Italian navy and the financial guard, that these people of the sea nobody was ever left without help.” While on a state visit to Israel, he asked that such situations not be used as a tool to achieve certain goals, because “human lives are at stake.”

Mediterranea says Italian officials requested the intervention of commercial vessels, but they did not carry out any rescue operations after arriving in the targeted area, where four such vessels were still present on Sunday, according to Luca Casarini, the organization’s head of mission. , ships.