Boat Carrying 500 Asylum Seekers Disappears in Mediterranean Sea

A boat carrying about 500 asylum seekers, including a newborn baby and pregnant women, has disappeared in the central Mediterranean, according to two humanitarian organizations.

Alarm Phone, a group that picks up calls from refugee vessels in distress, said on Friday that it had lost contact with the boat on Wednesday morning.

At the time, the boat was adrift with no working engine in high seas about 320km (200 miles) north of the Libyan port of Benghazi and more than 400km (250 miles) away from Malta and Italy’s southern island of Sicily.

Italian NGO Emergency said on Thursday that its Life Support ship and the Ocean Viking, another charity vessel, had looked for the missing boat for 24 hours but found no sign of it or any shipwreck.