The Italian judiciary has issued an arrest warrant for two suspected smugglers for the deaths of 10 people travelling across the Mediterranean Sea in hopes of reaching Europe.
The two men, both from Egypt, are accused of being responsible for the suffocation deaths of the migrants, a spokesman for the judiciary announced on Sunday. Most of the victims came from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
People often die on the crossing from Africa to Europe in boats that are often barely seaworthy. The dead were discovered in mid-June in the hold of a wooden boat that had set off for Europe from Libya and was then picked up off the Italian island of Lampedusa.
There were 54 other refugees on board. The survivors were brought to the island by Italy's coast guard.
According to the Ministry of the Interior in Rome, more than 25,300 people were registered as arriving in Italy via the Mediterranean in the first half of 2024.
That's a decrease of around 60% from the same period last year, when 62,364 people arrived in Italy by sea.
Italy's current prime minister, far-right politician Giorgia Meloni, made sharply reducing the number of refugees in Italy a centrepiece of her campaign before taking office in October 2022.