A boat carrying migrants and refugees capsized and sank on Sunday a short distance from the Italian island of Lampedusa, Italian authorities announced.

Immediately after the incident, patrols of the Italian financial police and the coast guard were activated, which with their speedboats managed to rescue 64 people from the sea. However, a two-year-old boy is still missing. The child had started this dangerous journey to Europe with his mother from Sierra Leone in Africa.

The search by Italian authorities continued late last night and resumed at dawn, in the hope of finding the missing person. According to the latest data, a total of 292 migrants and refugees have arrived in Lampedusa in the last 48 hours. Most of the vessels in which they were travelling had set off from the coast of Libya.