Ahmad 
Five people were killed and 8 injured when a boat carrying illegal migrants capsized off the coast of Malta.
The Maltese armed forces said the boat was carrying 34 people from Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Syria when it capsized within the boundaries of a marine fish farm, about 3.5 nautical miles off Malta’s southern coast.
The deputy commander of the Armed Forces of Malta, Edric Zahra, confirmed that five people died in the incident, eight were taken to hospital, and 21 others were rescued and transferred to a detention center to carry out the necessary procedures, adding that a woman was among the dead.
Malta rescued 380 illegal migrants at sea in 2023, the lowest annual total recorded in years and accounting for just 10 per cent of the number of illegal migrants arriving on the island in 2019.