Italian rescue teams have found 59 bodies of migrants and 80 survivors of the shipwreck that occurred early Sunday in southern Italy, but fear there may be more fatalities.
Among the victims are many children, including a newborn baby, and women, according to rescuers.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed in a statement her “deep regret” over the tragedy, saying it was “criminal to put a 20-meter ship with 200 people on board and bad weather forecast” at sea.
The uncertainty about the number of victims is due to different accounts of the survivors about the people who were traveling in the boat that sank at dawn near the Italian town of Crotone, in Calabria (south).
The number of passengers passed per survivor varies between 150 and 250, members of the rescue teams said, admitting that there are difficulties in communicating with the migrants because of language.
The Italian press reported that the migrants are from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, after initially mentioning the presence of Pakistanis.
According to the coast guard, the boat broke up on the rocks a few meters from the coast, at a time when the sea was very rough.
The Italian police images showed wooden remains scattered along a hundred meters of beach, where many rescuers and survivors waited to be transferred to a reception center.
Meloni said that the Government is committed to avoiding the departure of ships in conditions that give rise to tragedies like the one this Sunday, and promised to continue doing so, “which above all requires greater collaboration from the States of departure and origin”.
This shipwreck came just days after parliament approved controversial new rules on rescuing immigrants, formulated by the far-right dominated executive.
Meloni, leader of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia (FDI) party, took office as head of a coalition government in October 2022 after vowing to reduce the number of migrants arriving in Italy.
The new law forces humanitarian ships to carry out only one rescue at a time, which critics say increases the risk of death in the central Mediterranean, considered the world’s most dangerous crossing for migrants.
Italy’s geographic location makes it a top destination for asylum seekers moving from North Africa to Europe, and Rome has long complained about the number of arrivals on its territory.
According to the Interior Ministry, almost 14,000 migrants have landed in Italy since the beginning of the year, up from about 5,200 during the same period last year and 4,200 in 2021.
Updated news at 3:15 pm
Source: TSF
