The bodies of eight people, including a pregnant woman, were found this morning by the Italian Coast Guard aboard a precarious boat off the island of Lampedusa with 42 survivors.
Five men and three women “died of cold”, according to the testimonies of the survivors who informed the authorities that a few hours before, one of the deceased women threw her son – a four-month-old baby – into the sea. , who had also died “of cold”. Another man jumped into the sea to recover the baby’s body but drowned, according to the same testimonies.
The two, the baby and the man who jumped into the sea, are considered “disappeared” by the Italian authorities.
The survivors, who were wet and suffering from hypothermia, were transferred to a patrol boat that took them to Lampedusa and are currently in the center of Contrada Imbriacola.
The survivors informed the Italian authorities that the precarious boat left the port of Sfax, in Tunisia, last Saturday.
The Italian Prosecutor’s Office in Agrigento has launched an investigation for “complicity in illegal immigration and death”.
In the next few hours, the survivors will have to make a formal statement before the Italian judicial authorities.
According to police sources, the occupants of the boat are from Mali, the Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, including 10 women (two pregnant) and a minor.
The barge had already been sighted on Thursday morning by a Tunisian trawler that radioed for help from the Maltese maritime authorities, where it was at the time.
Following the request for help issued to the Maltese authorities, an Italian patrol was sent to the area where the boat with the eight dead on board was located.
A few hours before the rescue of this barge, the Italian Coast Guard rescued another precarious vessel with 75 people on board from Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Senegal.
Source: TSF
