The Maltese-flagged tanker Rimona was the closest merchant ship when Sea-Watch’s monitoring aircraft spotted four people waving from a drifting boat. They were the only survivors of a shipwreck in which 41 migrants are believed dead.
The four, originally from Ivory Coast and Guinea, told rescuers that 45 people left Sfax, Tunisia, on a 7-meter metal boat on Aug. 3. About six hours out, a huge wave overturned it and all 45 went into the water, RAI state television reported. Politico, citing the Italian newswire ANSA, said the dead include three children. No bodies have been recovered.
How the four were found
The Italian Red Cross said the survivors held on to inner tubes and climbed onto another empty vessel nearby. In its view that boat was evidence of how many craft are leaving Sfax and how rough the sea has been, with several other capsizings in recent days.
Frontex, the European Union border agency, said it had spotted a boat adrift in the Libyan search and rescue region and warned all national rescue coordination centers in the region. Sea-Watch flew to the spot and told the Rimona, according to Paul Wagner of the group. By the GPS position it shared, the survivors were about 66 kilometers (40 miles) from Tunisia and about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Lampedusa. The Rimona’s crew passed them to an Italian coast guard vessel, which landed them on Lampedusa on Wednesday.
Dr. Adrian Chiaramonte, who treated them, told RaiNews24 they had “small wounds” and dehydration, but “nothing major.” He said they reported that one boat saw them and kept going, and that a helicopter appeared an hour later before the tanker came. Around 15 people had rudimentary lifesavers, he added. The Red Cross said three of the four claim to be minors; U.N. agencies reported only one.
Tunisia as the new departure point
Libya’s coasts used to be the main launch area for smuggling. In recent months Tunisia’s eastern coast, and Sfax above all, has taken over, mostly with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa heading for Italy and elsewhere in Europe in small boats.
Tunisian authorities estimate that around 17,000 sub-Saharan people are now in the Sfax area. Since early July, hundreds have reportedly been rounded up in coastal cities and left in deserted border areas with Libya or Algeria. Tunisia’s interior minister has conceded that small groups are pushed back into those areas, but he denies mistreatment. President Kais Saied has promoted unfounded remarks that sub-Saharan migrants are part of a plot to alter the country’s identity and demographics.
The weekend before, rough seas produced a series of wrecks. Italian authorities pulled dozens of migrants from the water and from rocky reefs off Lampedusa, but survivors reported at least 30 people missing. Eight bodies washed ashore in Sfax.
The numbers and the response
The International Organization for Migration said this wreck brings the number of dead and missing in the central Mediterranean to more than 1,800 this year. The Interior Ministry in Rome says more than 93,000 migrants have reached Italy so far this year, against 45,000 in the same period of 2022.
Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government has pushed the EU to join it in urging Tunisia to crack down on smuggling, yet the boats keep setting off. Three U.N. agencies, the refugee agency, the children’s agency and IOM, called the steel-hulled boat particularly unsuited to the trip given the “prohibitive weather and sea conditions,” and said the case “highlights the absolute lack of scruples of traffickers.” Calls for safe and legal migration routes followed on Wednesday.
Sources
- 41 migrants die in shipwreck off Italy’s Lampedusa island
- Forty-one migrants die in shipwreck off Lampedusa
- 41 migrants die in shipwreck near the Italian island of Lampedusa
Sources
- 41 migrants die in shipwreck off Italy's Lampedusa island – Politico EU
- Forty-one migrants die in shipwreck off Lampedusa – BBC
