Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 09:41
The latest migratory tragedy in the Central Mediterranean involves the 66 people, including 26 children, who have been reported missing after sinking about 120 nautical miles off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria, in the south of the country. , the sailboat with which they had set sail from Turkey eight days earlier. It was a French ship that raised the alarm on Sunday night after having rescued 12 survivors of the ship loaded with immigrants, mostly from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, for which the Italian Coast Guard mobilized two patrol boats and a plane to try to help them. The Italian authorities also ordered several cargo ships that were in the area to divert to the site where the shipwreck occurred.
The 12 rescued people, who were transferred from the French ship to one of the Italian patrol boats and then taken to the port of Roccella Ionica, said that the sailboat’s engine caught fire, which caused the boat to end up turning over and sinking. «The scene was heartbreaking, in front of us traumatized people, the pain was palpable. Seeing a family member or friend drown is always horrible,” said Shakilla Mohammadi, an intercultural mediator for Doctors Without Borders, who treated the survivors on land. «Entire families in Afghanistan would have died. They left Türkiye eight days ago and had been taking on water for three or four days. They told us that they were traveling without life jackets and that some boats did not stop to help them,” Mohammadi said.
The Italian Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation to clarify the causes of this new tragedy, which occurred on the same day that another 10 migrants died in the Central Mediterranean, in this case after having set sail from the Libyan coast in an old wooden boat. . In the rescue, carried out by the rescuers from the German NGO Resqship and in which it was necessary to use axes to access the ship’s hold, 51 people were saved and are now in the reception center on the Italian island of Lampedusa. located in the center of the Mediterranean. They came mostly from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Syria and would have paid about 3,500 dollars (about 3,260 euros) for the trip.
The final document of the recent G7 summit, held last week in the Italian region of Apulia, in the south of the country, advocated precisely to launch an international coalition to fight against human traffickers. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, host of the event, pointed out that “a new strategy” was needed to “fight the slavers of the Third Millennium” by following the flow of money they move with their business.
With the people who died or whose trace has been lost in these latest shipwrecks, there would already be more than 800 migrants dead or missing on the Central Mediterranean route since the beginning of 2024, according to data from agencies dependent on the United Nations. This supranational organization showed its “frustration” at what happened, asking that resources be “strengthened” to search for and rescue migrants at sea. “All shipwrecks represent a collective failure, a tangible sign of the inability of States to protect the most vulnerable people,” the UN noted.
#migrants #missing #including #children #shipwreck #Italy #Basque #Journal