A boat carrying dozens of migrants sailing in the central Mediterranean crashed off the island of Lampedusa (southern Italy) in the last few hours, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported to EFE. 40 missing, including 7 women and 1 child.
When shipwreck occurs dangerous iron boat Migrants from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Cameroon leave Sfax (Tunisia) Overturned at sea by strong winds and wavesHe pointed to Flavio di Giacomo, IOM’s spokesperson for the Mediterranean.
Four migrants were rescued and taken to the Italian island, while the rest, between 37 and 40, are missing, 7 women and a minor as the exact figures cannot be determined.
“This is one of many shipwrecks that occurred off Lampedusa, which we often don’t even know what happened. We are convinced that much more than in other years“, which attributed them to the type of boat used by the human traffickers,” explained the spokesperson.
These are “very fragile, iron boats that broke after a few hours, we’ve been seeing them since October and November, and only Sub-Saharan migrants board them, they have to get on board because Tunisians drive the boats.” safer wood, so basically this is a form of discrimination, racism.
“We learned about the shipwreck when we found it on this occasion. few survivors in the water “But there are definitely a lot of dangerous boats that have sunk, making the route between Tunisia and Italy the most dangerous this year,” he said.
“It has become more dangerous than in Libya, and there are many deaths. Before the shipwreck in Greece, we estimated 1,039 deaths in the central Mediterranean. I think without a doubt More than 1,500, but we have to wait for the official figure”.
“But in addition to We think the real number is actually much higher because there are so many sunken ships that no one knows anything about them.He warned that with the coming of summer, there will be even more immigrants who will cross the Mediterranean in these dangerous boats.
The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team on board the Geo Barents ship this morning rescued 13 people, including two women and two unaccompanied children, who had been traveling on an unstable boat for three days, the NGO learned from its social media account.
“They assigned us the port of La Spezia, three and a half days’ cruise from our current location,” said the organization, where Geo Barents joined the Spanish humanitarian ships Aita Mari and Open Arms. Salerno (south) and Livorno (north) in recent days.
A total of 58,171 migrants have arrived on Italian coasts so far this year, more than double the 24,808 who did so in the same period last year, according to Interior Ministry records.