UN agencies say 64 people are missing after shipwrecks off the coast of southern Italy.
At least 11 people have died and another 64 are missing after two shipwrecks off southern Italy, according to a German charity, the Italian coast guard and United Nations agencies.
German aid group RESQSHIP, which operates the Nadir rescue ship, said it rescued 51 people from a sinking wooden boat, including two who were unconscious, and found 10 bodies trapped on the ship’s lower deck.
“Our thoughts are with their families. We are angry and sad,” the group posted on X on Monday.
RESQSHIP said the survivors were handed over to the Italian coast guard and taken ashore on Monday morning as the Nadir headed for the island of Lampedusa, towing the wooden boat carrying the bodies of the deceased.
(2/2) The unconscious are currently receiving medical attention and awaiting a much-needed emergency evacuation. The 10 dead are on the boat’s flooded lower deck.
Our thoughts are with their families. We are angry and sad. #FortalezaEuropa Woods. pic.twitter.com/o9y1gihfhs
– RESQSHIP (@resqship_int) June 17, 2024
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement that the refugees and migrants intercepted by the German charity came from from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh. .
The second sinking occurred about 200 kilometers east of the Italian region of Calabria, when a boat that left Turkey eight days earlier caught fire and capsized, UN agencies said.
They said 64 people were missing at sea, while 11 were rescued and taken ashore to the Calabrian town of Roccella Ionica by the Italian coast guard, along with the body of a woman.
The coast guard previously said it was searching for an unspecified number of missing people, with help from the European Union’s border agency, Frontex.
The vessel, a sailboat found partially sunk, was first spotted by a French boat in international waters where the Italian and Greek search and rescue zones overlap, the coast guard said.
UN agencies said the refugees and migrants involved in the second sinking came from Iran, Syria and Iraq.
According to a March report by IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, more than 27,000 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea over the past decade while trying to reach southern Europe from northern Africa.
While most deaths in the central Mediterranean have been documented off the coast of Libya, the IOM has also recorded an “increase in departures and, correspondingly, shipwrecks” off the coast of Tunisia. At least 729 people died on the Tunisian coast in 2023, compared to 462 the previous year.
When the IOM project began in 2014, European sentiment was more sympathetic to the plight of refugees, and the Italian government launched “Mare Nostrum”, a major search and rescue mission that saved thousands of lives.
But with anti-immigration political parties gaining more and more influence across Europe, governments have tried to stem migration flows into their countries by promising funds to Mediterranean countries such as Tunisia and Egypt.
The UN and other NGOs have again called on EU governments to step up search and rescue efforts in the Mediterranean and expand legal and safe migration channels so that migrants “are not forced to risk their lives at sea”.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
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