Storm Harry, which struck southern Italy with great violence at the end of January, most likely triggered an infinitely greater tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea: more than a thousand migrants may have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean during the days when the storm hit the route between Tunisia and Italy. This is an unofficial toll, but one that emerges from cross-referencing data from recognised search and rescue operations by NGOs and coast guards, direct eyewitness accounts of shipwrecks, and community monitoring of departures from the Tunisian coast of Sfax. Simply adding up the collected figures brings the count to at least one thousand migrants, and the organisation that carried out this tally is Refugees in Libya, an association of migrant activists already in Europe or still in Africa, born out of the high-profile protests of 2022 outside the UNHCR offices in Tripoli, Libya, over conditions in Libyan detention camps.

Official data does not speak of a thousand dead migrants…

The first confirmed figure comes from official maritime channels: according to a search and rescue (SAR) alert dispatch transmitted by the Italian Coast Guard via Inmarsat, an advanced network of geostationary satellites, at least 380 people were reported missing at sea as of 24 January, as first reported by Sergio Scandura. The dispatch grouped eight separate SAR cases, relating to eight vessels that had departed from Sfax between 14 and 21 January 2026, each carrying between 36 and 54 people on board. None of these vessels has been located to date, and no confirmed rescues linked to the eight incidents have been recorded.

Sergio Scandura @scandura

𝕏

🔴 380 Persone disperse in mare: mancano all'appello da dieci giorni.

Un unico dispaccio di allerta a "tutte le navi in area" raggruppa ben otto casi SAR per otto imbarcazioni che nei giorni scorsi hanno preso il largo da Sfax 🇹🇳

Il dispaccio SAR - trasmesso in data odierna

♥ 177 24 gen 2026 · Apri su X →

Those departures coincide with Cyclone Harry's passage over the central Mediterranean. During those days, along the Sfax–Lampedusa route, waves exceeding seven metres and wind gusts beyond 54 knots were recorded — among the most dangerous conditions of the entire winter season. The vessels, often overcrowded and unfit for open-sea navigation, disappeared precisely while the basin was being struck by an extreme weather event. The danger of that period is further confirmed by the testimony of Ramadan Konte, a citizen of Sierra Leone and the sole survivor of a shipwreck that occurred during those same days, who was rescued and brought to Malta: Konte told Refugees in Libya that he had departed from Sfax on a vessel carrying around 50 people, and that he had remained at sea for more than 24 hours after the boat capsized, before being rescued by a sailing vessel east of Tunisia and south of Malta. Footage from the rescue shows bodies floating in the water.

…but eyewitness accounts say otherwise

To the official figures, however, must be added those emerging from testimony-based monitoring: from 15 January onwards, according to accounts gathered from relatives of the missing and people who were due to board, a further 29 vessels are said to have departed from various points along the coastline around Sfax. Of these, only one managed to reach the Italian coast, while another reportedly returned to Sfax after being intercepted without any loss of life on board, though those on board were subsequently arrested by Tunisian police. There is no news whatsoever of the remaining 27 boats: no calls from Libya, no contact from detention, no confirmed deaths, no trace in the Algerian desert.

In the meantime, over the same period, dozens of bodies were recovered by Maltese authorities, and a further corpse was spotted in the days following 24 January by the crew of the rescue vessel Ocean Viking in the Maltese SAR region. So, are there truly at least a thousand dead or missing in the Mediterranean during the days of Cyclone Harry? Stating this with certainty is impossible, as information remains fragmented and often conflicting — not due to a lack of evidence, Refugees in Libya explains, but because of the absence of a central system to record departures, losses and recoveries.

OIM Mediterraneo 🇺🇳 @OIMItalia

𝕏

At least 132 #migrants have already died along Mediterranean routes in 2026:

• 112 in the Central Mediterranean
• 7 in the Western Mediterranean
• 13 in the Eastern Mediterranean

❗Urgent action is needed to prevent more deaths

#IOMMedUpdate @MissingMigrants @UNmigration

29 gen 2026 · Apri su X →

But giving credence to eyewitness accounts (those provided by Konte, for instance, have been validated by the International Organization for Migration), and assuming an arbitrary average of 40 people on board each of the 27 missing vessels (roughly the same capacity as those tracked down by the Italian Coast Guard), the total would already stand at 1,080 dead or missing — to which the already-certified 380 would need to be added. More than an information gap, then, what emerges is a gap in action: the appeal directed at Italy, Malta, Spain and the European Union is to launch immediate, transparent and large-scale search and rescue operations, to shed light on what may be one of the worst mass tragedies of recent years in the Mediterranean.