More than 1,000 refugees have arrived on the island of Lampedusa since Easter Sunday. 36 people, including eight women and one minor, were rescued by a Coast Guard ship on Monday night. The seven meter long boat had left Tunisia. On board were people from Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia and Guinea.
On Easter Sunday, 26 boats with a total of 974 people arrived in Lampedusa. On Saturday, 17 boats with 679 people landed on the island between Tunisia and Sicily. There were 1,883 refugees in the island’s hotspot on Monday. Some of them are to be taken to Sicily by ferry on Monday.
The bodies of two refugees were recovered by the NGO ship Resqship on Sunday and taken to Lampedusa. The crew of the rescue ship had previously rescued around 25 people who had been shipwrecked in Maltese waters. The crew recovered 22 survivors and two bodies.
Several people were reported missing following the boat sank, but their number is unclear: around 20 people are being sought, according to the authorities.
According to the aid organization Alarm Phone, a fishing boat with 400 people on board was floating in the central Mediterranean on Easter Sunday. The boat departed from Tobruk in Libya. “We have alerted the authorities, but no rescue operation has yet been confirmed,” reported Alarm Phone.
Despite the dangerous crossing across the Mediterranean, many people continue to make their way to Europe. Since the beginning of 2023, 28,028 migrants and refugees have arrived in Italy by sea, compared to 6,832 in the same period in 2022 and 8,394 in 2021, according to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior in Rome.
