Hundreds of migrants trying to reach Europe have disappeared in shipwrecks on the Mediterranean Sea this year, human rights agencies say.

Bodies were reported washed up and empty migrant tents were found in Libya and Tunisia, while phone calls from worried families went unanswered, the agencies say.

The UN’ International Organisation for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project puts the death toll for 2026 at 682 confirmed missing, but the real figures is certain to be much higher.

The figure means the beginning of 2026 ranks as the deadliest start to any year for people trying to cross the Mediterranean.

And human rights groups are increasingly finding it difficult to verify tolls as Italy, Tunisia and Malta have stopped releasing information on migrant rescues and shipwrecks along the world’s deadliest migration route.

Human rights advocates have termed losses “invisible shipwrecks” and accuse Mediterranean nations of a “strategy of silence”.

The agencies have been raising the alarm since Cyclone Harry tore through the region in late January with reported losses of 1000 migrants.

In the weeks that followed the cyclone, more than 20 decomposing bodies washed ashore in Italy and Libya while other human remains were spotted floating in the middle of the sea.

IOM’s Missing Migrants Project said that last year at least 1,500 people were reported missing whose fates could not be determined.

In response, the project as initiated a new data set called ‘unverifiable cases’ because the numbers have increased so much.

Humanitarian organisations that previously responded shipwrecks or filled some of the information gaps are no longer able to do so because of the slashing of global humanitarian funding led by the rump Administration.

Advocacy groups say that over time Mediterranean nations have gradually reduced information related to migrants.

But this dearth of information was even greater in the wake of Cyclone Harry, which brought heavy rainfall, 100-kilometre winds and nine-metre swells.

Only one person is known to have survived from the boats reported missing during Cyclone Harry.

He was floating in the water when a merchant vessel rescued him in late January. The man told crew members he had been aboard a boat 50 other 50 people, some of whose bodies can be seen in the water in video of the rescue.

According to local reports, the captain said the survivor was evacuated to Malta.

Frontex, the European Union’s border surveillance agency, reported that it identified eight boats carrying about 160 migrants in the last wo weeks of January.

It said six boats were rescued by Italian authorities, but the fate of the other two remains unknown.

At least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide in 2025, according to IOM.