THE Italian Coast Guard announced today that it had found 14 more bodies after a ship carrying migrants sank off the country’s southern coast earlier this week, raising the death toll to 34.

More than 60 people are missing after the sailboat sank off the coast of Calabria overnight Sunday into Monday, and 11 have been rescued.

“Today, 14 bodies were collected … in total, 34 bodies were collected,” the Coast Guard said in a press release.

Air and sea searches continue to locate the missing.

On Thursday, the coast guard announced that 12 more bodies had been recovered, some of them women and children.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said earlier this week that survivors had reported 66 people missing, including at least 26 children.

The vessel, which departed from Turkey, sank about 120 nautical miles off the coast of Calabria. Afghan families are among the missing, according to MSF.

Ten bodies were found on another migrant ship that sank on Monday off the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to the German aid group ResQship.

According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 3,155 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean last year, and more than 1,000 have died or gone missing since the start of the year.

The central Mediterranean is the deadliest migration route in the world and accounts for 80% of the dead and missing in the Mediterranean.

Many migrants leave Tunisia or Libya by boat for Europe, and Italy is often their first port of call.

Arrivals have fallen significantly since the start of the year, with 24,100 people having landed in Italy so far, compared with more than 57,500 in the same period in 2023, according to the interior ministry.