63 people are killed as a migrant boat strikes rocks close to Italy.

(cnn) ⸻ At least 63 people including children and women died after a wooden boat carrying migrants from Turkey broke apart on rocks off the coast of Calabria on Sunday, Italian authorities said. More bodies were being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, where bad weather hampered search efforts and made the field of debris larger. At least 82 passengers survived the shipwreck, an official from Italy's Crotone prefecture said. The vessel left the Turkish city of Izmir three or four days before the wreck, with 140 to 150 people on board. The first three bodies washed up on the beach near Staccato di Cutro in southern Italy around 4:40 a.m. local time Sunday. The full breakdown of migrants by gender and ages who have died was set to be released soon and the total number of people missing had not yet been established. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blamed human traffickers, saying it is criminal to launch a boat just 20 meters long with 200 people on board in adverse weather. The Italian government has made stopping migrant boats a priority, with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Pope Francis both expressing their condolences for the victims of the shipwreck. UNHCR records show that 11,874 people have arrived in Italy so far in 2023 by sea, with 678 of them arriving at Calabria. Most of the arrivals are from African countries, with 17.3% of arrivals from Ivory Coast alone, 13.1% from Guinea, and other African nations making up most of the rest. The most deadly migration route is the Central Mediterranean route, where at least 20,334 people have died since 2014.