Twenty-one migrants disappear in a new shipwreck in the Channel of Sicily | El Diario Vasco

Twenty-one migrants remain missing in the Central Mediterranean, including three children, after the boat they were trying to reach Europe on sank on Sunday afternoon from the Libyan port of Sabrata, in the west of the country. Of the twenty-eight people who boarded the boat, from Syria and Sudan, only seven managed to survive by climbing onto the hull of the ship after it capsized after a day of sailing, when they were in Libyan territorial waters.

These seven Syrian men endured the onslaught of the sea for three days and three nights without food or water until they were finally rescued by an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat, which took them to the reception centre for migrants on the island of Lampedusa, where they arrived on Wednesday morning.

The Italian public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation to clarify the causes of the accident, as it is not known whether the boat capsized due to a strong sea, an engine problem or other reasons. The survivors, some of whom had slight hypothermia due to the long period of permanence in the water, were exhausted and were treated by the paramedics at the medical centre in Lampedusa.

They said that after the boat capsized, they were left without food, water or phones to call for help. The help finally arrived after three days adrift, when they were in Italian territorial waters and were located by officers of an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat.

The deadliest route

So far in 2024, 1,047 migrants have died or disappeared on the Central Mediterranean route, according to UN data, confirming that it remains the deadliest route in the world. There were 2,192 during the same period last year.

This decrease in the number of deaths is the result of the reduction in flows on this route recorded in recent months thanks to the agreements reached by the European Union and Italy with Libya, Tunisia and Egypt to strengthen border control in exchange for huge financial and material aid.

In fact, the Minister of the Interior of the Government of Rome, Matteo Piantedosi, recently celebrated that the Libyan Coast Guard, armed with patrol boats donated by the Italian authorities, which also train the crews, has “intercepted at sea and returned” 15,117 people to the North African country so far in 2024.

In this period, 43,061 migrants have landed on the Italian coast after crossing the Sicilian Channel, 60% less than in the same period in 2023, when there were 115,177. These good figures recently led Piantedosi’s number two at the Ministry, Nicola Molteni, to assure that “while last year the emergency was in Lampedusa, now it is in the Canary Islands, in Spain.”