More than 40 migrants are feared dead off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, after a lone 11-year-old survivor said the boat she was on capsized, a rescue group said on Wednesday.
“We believe she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned,” said Compass Collective, which is assisting migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean.
The group’s Trotamar III ship “heard the girl’s calls in the darkness” at about 2:20 a.m. (01:20 GMT) on Wednesday morning while en route to another emergency.
“The 11-year-old girl, originally from Sierra Leone, had been floating in the water for three days wearing two makeshift life jackets made from air-filled inner tubes and a simple life jacket,” the group said in a statement. Compass Collective also released images of the inner tubes and of rescuers treating the girl.
Compass Collective
Mauro Marino, a doctor who examined her, told the Repubblica newspaper that he believed the girl had been in the sea for about 12 hours.
The girl told rescuers that the metal boat left from Sfax, Tunisia. She said the boat sank within seconds when violent storms with 10-foot waves arose and that she and two others were in the water together for a while but then lost contact, the BBC reported.
“The girl had no drinking water or food with her and was hypothermic, but reactive and oriented,” Compass Collective said.
A spokeswoman for Mediterranean Hope, another charity, told AFP that the girl was recovering in hospital after her rescue.
Group representatives found the girl “very tired,” spokeswoman Marta Bernardini said.
Italian news agency ANSA reported that coast guard and police boats searched the area where the shipwrecked man was found on Wednesday.
“They have not yet found any bodies or traces of clothing,” ANSA wrote.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 30,00 migrants have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean since figures began being recorded a decade ago. The BBC reports that Italy has borne the brunt, hosting more than 63,000 people this year alone, according to data released by the United Nations.
Last year, minimum 64 peopleincluding eight children, died when their overcrowded wooden boat struck the shoals just a few hundred meters off Italy’s Calabrian coast and broke up early in rough seas.
