ROME — The U.N. children’s fund urged governments on Thursday to prioritize the safety of migrant children after the latest Mediterranean shipwreck left about 20 people missing and added to a gruesome annual tally.

Among the seven survivors of the New Year’s Eve wreck off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa was an 8-year-old girl whose mother is among the missing, UNICEF said.

The agency noted that last month, an 11-year-old girl found floating off Lampedusa was believed to be the lone survivor of a migrant boat that had left Sfax, Tunisia, with about 45 people on board.

According to the International Organization of Migration’s missing migrant tracker, 2,275 people were unaccounted for in the Mediterranean in 2024, bringing the total number of people missing since 2014 to 31,180. The vast majority — 24,466 — were believed to have died on the perilous central Mediterranean route, which is most often used by smugglers from Libya and Tunisia to ferry desperate people toward Italy.

— The Associated Press