MILAN (AP) — Two toddlers died when a smugglers’ boat sank in the central Mediterranean this weekend, while 17 others including a child were rescued, a humanitarian group said Monday.

The German rescue ship Sea Punk I recovered the body of a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old died on board the vessel while medical personnel attempted life-saving measures, said the group’s spokesman Gerson Reschke. Survivors reported that several more people had drowned during the voyage, including another small child.

Sea Punks said that people were drifting in the water on both sides of the boat when the rescue vessel arrived in response to an emergency call. “All available rescue equipment was used to save as many people as possible,’’ it said in statement.

The rescue happened in a part of the Malta search-and-rescue zone that is closer to Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa than the tiny EU island nation. A Malta rescue helicopter evacuated a pregnant woman and a severely injured man.

Sea Punks 1 transferred 15 survivors and the two bodies to an Italian coast guard vessel, which brought them to Lampedusa. Many showed signs of severe hypothermia, the group said.

The U.N. Missing Migrant Project puts the number of the dead and missing in the perilous Central Mediterranean at over 24,506 from 2014-2024, many of whom were lost at sea. The project says that number may be greater, as many deaths go unrecorded, with the sightings of so-called ghost ships with noone aboard and remains of people washing ashore in Libya not associated with any known shipwreck.

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