Four people floated on inner tubes and lifejackets until they found an empty boat. They drifted in it for several days. That is how the only survivors of a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa stayed alive, according to the Italian Red Cross and the German charity Sea-Watch.
Forty-one other migrants did not make it. The survivors told local media and rescuers that their boat left Sfax, Tunisia, bound for Italy, and went down within hours after a big wave hit it. The four, originally from the Ivory Coast and Guinea, reached Lampedusa on Wednesday. They were a 13-year-old boy, two men and a woman.
A small boat, a big wave
The survivors said 45 people were aboard, three of them children. The boat was about 7m (20ft) long and had left Sfax on Thursday of the previous week. Only 15 people are understood to have been wearing lifejackets, and they apparently did not help.
Dr. Adrian Chiaramonte, who treated the four on Lampedusa, said they arrived exhausted and in shock but with only minor injuries. What stayed with him was their account of the rescue. “They said they had encountered a first ship, which had apparently ignored them,” he said. “An hour later they were spotted by a helicopter, and an hour after that sighting, they were picked up by an oil tanker.”
Local public prosecutor Salvatore Vella has opened an investigation. The Italian coast guard reported two shipwrecks in the area on Sunday, though it is not clear whether this was one of them.
Why these boats fail
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the passengers would have had little chance. Spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo told AFP that sub-Saharan migrants leaving Tunisia are pushed onto “low-cost iron boats which break after 20 or 30 hours of navigation,” and that in a heavy sea “these boats capsize easily.”
Tunisian authorities describe Sfax, a port city about 80 miles (130km) from Lampedusa, as a popular gateway for people seeking safety and a better life in Europe. Attempts to leave Tunisia by boat have risen as a wave of racism against black Africans has built up there in recent months.
More than 1,800 people have died this year on the crossing from North Africa to Europe. The United Nations has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014, which makes it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world.
In recent days Italian patrol boats and charity groups have brought another 2,000 people to Lampedusa. Italy’s far-right government has told rescue ships to dock at ports further away instead of landing migrants in Lampedusa or Sicily. The government says this spreads arrivals across the country. Aid groups argue it cuts the time they can spend patrolling waters where shipwrecks are more common.
Sources
Sources
- Forty-one migrants die in shipwreck off Lampedusa – BBC
- At least 41 people die after boat sinks off Tunisia | Migration News
