2023-06-24 15:07:00
A boat with dozens of migrants who was sailing in the Central Mediterranean has been shipwrecked in the last few hours off the coast of the island of Lampedusa (southern Italy), confirmed to EFE the International Organization for Migration (IOM)which estimates about 40 missing persons, including 7 women and a child.
The shipwreck occurred when the precarious iron boat in which the migrants, originally from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Cameroon, They had left Sfax (Tunisia) capsized into the sea due to strong winds and waves, said the IOM spokesman for the Mediterranean, Flavio di Giacomo.
Four migrants were rescued and taken to the Italian island, while the rest, between 37 and 40, because the figures cannot be established with absolute certainty, are missing, including 7 women and a minor.
“This is one of the many shipwrecks that occur off Lampedusa, of which many times we don’t even know what happens, but we are convinced that there are many, more than other years“, explained the spokesman, who blamed them on the type of boat used by the traffickers.
It is about “biron arches, very fragile, that break after a few hours, we have been seeing them since October and November, and only migrants of sub-Saharan origin go on them, they are forced to board, because the Tunisians use the safest wooden boats, So basically it’s a form of discrimination, of racism.”
“On this occasion we have learned of the shipwreck when we found several survivors who were in the water when the rescue services arrived, but surely there are many precarious boats that sink and that make the route between Tunisia and Italy the most dangerous this year“, said Di Giacomo.
It has become “more dangerous than that of Libya and there are many deaths. Before the shipwreck in Greece we estimated that there were 1,039 deaths in the Central Mediterranean. I think it is undoubtedly more than 1,500, although we have to wait for the official figure.”
“But it is that we also believe that the real number is actually much higher because there are many ships that sink that nobody knows anything about, “ he said, warning that with the arrival of summer there will be even more migrants who will set out to cross the Mediterranean in these dangerous boats.
This morning the team Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on board the Geo Barents rescued 13 people, including two women and two unaccompanied minors, who had been traveling in an unstable boat for three days, the NGO reported on its social networks.
“They have assigned us the port of La Spezia, which is three and a half days of navigation from our current position,” The organization was revealed almost immediately, so the Geo Barents joins the Spanish humanitarian ships Aita Mari and Open Arms, sent in recent days to Salerno (south) and Livorno (north).
So far this year, a total of 58,171 migrants have arrived on Italian shores, according to Interior Ministry records, more than double the 24,808 that did so in the same period last year.
EFE
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