The girl was among a group of 60 Syrians who were located by a Cypriot search and rescue team on a heavily-loaded fishing boat 30 nautical miles off Cyprus on Wednesday morning.

They had been at sea since Jan 18 after sailing from Lebanon.

“Unfortunately one of the three children has died. It was a sudden death caused by cardiac arrest,” a spokesman for Cyprus’s national health organisation told Alpha Cyprus TV.

Two other children who were found unconscious on board the boat remained in an intensive care unit in Cyprus’s capital Nicosia.

Cyprus has seen a surge in irregular migration by sea in the past year; it recorded 4,259 arrivals in 2023 compared with 937 in 2022.

It lies a mere 100 miles from the coasts of both Syria and Lebanon, and upheaval in the region is fanning fears of a further increase.

Cypriot interior minister Constantinos Ioannou has said he would raise the need for better patrols with his European Union counterparts meeting at an informal summit today.

Cyprus also wants the EU to consider declaring parts of Syria safe, which would allow authorities to return irregular migrants and deter future arrivals.