The Italian Coast Guard said at least 43 migrants died when their overcrowded wooden boat crashed into rocky reefs near southern Italy at dawn on Sunday.
“So far, 80 people have been recovered alive, some of whom managed to make it to shore after a shipwreck, and 43 bodies have been found along the coast,” the Coast Guard said in a statement shortly before noon.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the migrants were crammed into a 20-meter (66 ft) boat in “adverse weather conditions”. In a statement released by her office, she expressed “deep sorrow at the many human lives taken by human traffickers.”
“It is inhumane to trade the lives of men, women and children for the ‘price’ of a ticket they paid in the false hope of safe travel,” said Meloni, a far-right leader whose ruling allies include the Migrant League party.
She vowed to use her leadership to push for a crackdown on smuggler-led trips and to pressure other European Union leaders to help Italy find her.
A piece of a boat, along with piles of split wood, littered the beach at Steccato di Cutro, part of the Calabrian coast along the Ionian Sea. Some of the survivors tried to keep warm by wrapping themselves in colorful blankets or sheets.
A helicopter and motor boats were involved in the search, including ships of state firefighters, border police and coast guards.
The statement said a Coast Guard motorboat rescued two men suffering from hypothermia and retrieved the boy’s body in rough seas.
Fire boats, including rescue divers, found 28 bodies, including three, carried away by strong currents far from the crash site.
The Italian news agency AGI reported that among the bodies was a baby aged several months.
Pope Francis on Sunday lamented that there were children among the victims of the shipwreck.
Francis told the faithful in St. Peter’s Square: “I pray for each of them, for the missing and other surviving migrants.” The pontiff added that he also prays for rescuers “and for those who welcome” the migrants.
“This is a huge tragedy,” Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told state television RAI.
“As a sign of solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery” for the dead, Voche said.
Details about the nationalities of migrants were not immediately given in the reports.
It was also unclear where the boat had left from, but migrant ships arriving in Calabria usually depart from Turkish or Egyptian shores. Many of these boats, including sailboats, often reach remote stretches of Italy’s long southern coastline without the help of the Coast Guard or humanitarian rescue boats.
Another maritime route used by traffickers, considered one of the deadliest for migration, crosses the central Mediterranean from the coast of Libya, where migrants are often subjected to brutal detention conditions for months before they can board rubber dinghies or aging wooden fishing boats. to the Italian coast.
Most migrants leaving Libya are fleeing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa or Asian countries, including Bangladesh and Pakistan, rather than war or persecution, and risk being denied asylum by the Italian authorities.
Another heavily trafficked traffic route starts off the coast of Tunisia, and many of these boats reach the southern Italian island of Lampedusa or the beaches of Sardinia, often without the need for rescue.
Meloni’s government has focused on making it more difficult for humanitarian ships to carry out the many rescue missions in the central Mediterranean by assigning ports of landing along Italy’s northern coast, meaning ships take longer to return to sea after bringing on board rescued, often hundreds of migrants. , safely ashore.
According to the latest data, in 2022 almost 1 million people applied for asylum in the EU, the highest number since 2016 and a 50% increase compared to 2021.
