At least 60 migrants disappear in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy

At least 60 migrants are missing in the Mediterranean Sea, after the sailboat they were traveling on capsized when they were about 120 miles off the coast of Calabria (Italy). Another 12 people sailing in the same boat were rescued by a merchant ship and later transferred to a Coast Guard boat, which took them to the mainland to Roccella Ionica, in the province of Reggio Calabria. One of those rescued died shortly after disembarkation. Italian authorities searched for the missing from early Sunday morning to Monday.

With the good weather, the departures of migrants trying to reach Europe through the Mediterranean have increased, as have shipwrecks. This Monday, the ship Nadir of the rescue NGO Resqship located the bodies of 10 migrants inside a wooden barge that was adrift in the central Mediterranean. Another 51 people were crammed into the boat and were rescued by the same humanitarian organization.

“In total, 61 people were in a wooden boat that was full of water. “Our crew was able to evacuate 51, two of whom were unconscious,” the NGO noted. And he explained that the rescuers had to use an ax to free the survivors, since they were trapped, along with the bodies, at the bottom of the boat, which was flooding at the time of the rescue. The castaways were evacuated to an Italian coast guard vessel that took them to dry land. In the afternoon, the Nadir It was heading towards the island of Lampedusa, while towing the boat with the bodies of the deceased.

According to the first reconstructions, the sailboat wrecked off the coast of Calabria had set sail a few days ago from a port in Turkey with passengers of Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian nationality. The survivors have reported that during the journey water began to enter the boat, which ended up sinking in the Ionian Sea, the Red Cross has detailed. Some of the migrants have explained that there was an explosion on the boat, something that health operators consider feasible due to the burns of the castaways. The authorities are studying whether a short circuit could have occurred in the engine area or the fuel storage area.

A French pleasure boat, which was sailing near the site of the shipwreck, on the border of the search and rescue competition zones of Greece and Italy, sent out a distress message over the radio and managed to save 12 migrants, Italian media have published. . The Italian coast guard managed the rescue operation and asked two nearby merchant ships to divert and go to the scene of the tragedy. The castaways were first transferred to one of them and then to an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat that took them to the port of Roccella Jonica, where they received medical and psychological care.

26 missing children

One of the cultural mediators of Doctors Without Borders, who provided first aid to the survivors in the Calabrian port, described a “heartbreaking scene”. “In front of us were traumatized people, the pain was palpable. Seeing a family member or friend drown is always horrible,” said mediator Shakilla Mohammadi, who specified that survivors speak of 66 missing people, including 26 children. According to information from this NGO, the boat left Turkey eight days ago and had been leaking for four days. “They told us that they were traveling without life jackets and that some boats did not stop to help them,” the humanitarian worker specified.

Units from Frontex, the European Border Agency, also intervened at the site of the wreck. The Italian Prosecutor’s Office of Locri, in the province of Reggio Calabria, has opened an investigation to clarify what happened.

The shipwreck occurred in the same area of ​​the Ionian Sea, where a little over a year ago a hundred migrants lost their lives in a similar tragedy. On that occasion, the Italian Prime Minister, the ultra-conservative Giorgia Meloni, toughened the penalties for the human traffickers who organize the crossings and also for those who guide the boats, who in many cases tend to be the migrants themselves who are forced to take the rudder of the precarious boats in which they travel so as not to end up adrift.

The Italian justice system has sentenced a Turkish man accused of being the captain of the shipwrecked ship to 20 years in prison. An investigation last year by Morning Express, together with Lighthouse Reports, reconstructed the tragedy and revealed the fatal chain of errors by the Italian and European authorities that prevented the tragedy from being avoided.

Furthermore, this Monday morning, the Ocean Viking ship of the NGO SOS Méditerranée rescued 54 migrants who were traveling aboard a crowded inflatable boat in the Libyan search and rescue area. 28 of them were minors.

Barely a week ago, the central Mediterranean was the scene of another tragedy. On that occasion, at least 17 lifeless bodies appeared floating in the sea and 12 of them were recovered by the NGO ships Geo Barents and Ocean Viking. Humanitarian organizations denounced at that time the “devastating and reckless European policies regarding migration and non-assistance to people undertaking the Mediterranean route.”

So far this year, 23,700 migrants have arrived on Italian shores, half of those who arrived in the same period of the previous year, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. According to the International Organization for Migration, almost a thousand migrants trying to reach European shores have disappeared or died in the Mediterranean as of June.

Follow all the international information on Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.

_