STECCATO DI CUTRO, Italy, February 26 (Portal) – At least 59 people died, including 12 children, when a wooden sailing boat carrying migrants bound for Europe crashed into rocks near the southern Italian coast early Sunday, authorities said.
The ship, which departed from Turkey and was carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran and several other countries, sank in rough sea conditions near Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort on Calabria’s east coast.
The incident has reignited debate over migration in Europe and Italy, where the recently elected right-wing government’s harsh new laws on migrant rescue charities have drawn criticism from the UN and others.
As of Sunday afternoon, the preliminary death toll stood at 59 but is expected to rise, Deputy Home Secretary Wanda Ferro told reporters.
Manuela Curra, a provincial government official, previously told Portal that 81 people survived the shipwreck. Twenty of them were hospitalized, including one person in intensive care.
last update
Watch 2 more stories
As emergency services searched the sea and shore in stormy weather, Curra said survivors said there were about 140 to 150 on board – suggesting some people are missing.
The boat left Turkey’s western port of Izmir about four days ago and was sighted about 74 km (46 miles) offshore late Saturday by a plane operated by EU border protection agency Frontex, Italian police said.
Patrol boats were mobilized to intercept it, but heavy weather forced them to return to port, police said, adding authorities then mobilized search units along the coast.
According to the ANSA news agency, a baby, just a few months old, was found among the migrants who washed up on the beach first.
Paramedic Laura De Paoli described finding another dead child, aged seven.
“When we got to the site of the shipwreck, we saw bodies floating everywhere and we rescued two men who were holding up a child. Unfortunately, the little one was dead,” she told ANSA.
In a voice cracking with emotion, Cutro Mayor Antonio Ceraso told SkyTG24 news channel that he had “seen a spectacle that you never want to see in your life… life”.
Wreckage from the wooden gulet, a Turkish sailing boat, lay strewn across a large stretch of coastline.
[1/13] Rescuers work on the beach where bodies of refugees were found after a shipwreck, in Cutro, the east coast of Italy’s Calabria region, Italy February 26, 2023, in this screenshot from a Portal TV video. Portal-TV via Portal
A survivor was arrested on allegations of migrant trafficking, Customs Police Guardia di Finanza said.
“WRONG VIEW” OF SECURITY
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her deep sadness at the deaths and accused traffickers who profit by offering migrants “the wrong prospect of safe travel”.
“The government is and will continue to work to prevent exits and thus the unfolding of these tragedies, first and foremost demanding maximum cooperation from the countries of departure and origin,” she said.
The Meloni administration said migrant rescue organizations encourage migrants to make the dangerous sea journey to Italy and sometimes collaborate with traffickers.
Charities firmly deny both allegations.
“Stopping, blocking and making the work of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) more difficult will have only one effect: the deaths of vulnerable people who are left without help,” Spanish aid organization Open Arms tweeted in response to the shipwreck on Sunday.
However, the coast off Calabria is not routinely patrolled by NGO vessels operating in the waters south of Sicily. This suggests that they would have been unlikely to have intercepted the shipwrecked migrants regardless of Meloni’s actions.
The head of Italy’s Catholic Church, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, called for the resumption of an EU search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean as part of a “structural, joint and humanitarian response” to the migration crisis.
A spokesman for the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) appealed in the same direction on Twitter to step up rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Flavio Di Giacomo also called for the opening of “more regular channels of migration” to Europe and action to address what he says are the multiple causes pushing people to attempt the sea crossing.
Pope Francis, the son of Italian migrants to Argentina and long a vocal advocate of migrants’ rights, said Sunday he was praying for the victims of the shipwreck.
Italy is one of the main landing points for migrants attempting to enter Europe by sea, with many attempting to continue to the wealthier northern European countries. But to do so, they must face the most dangerous migration route in the world.
The United Nations Missing Migrants Project has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014. More than 220 have died or disappeared this year, it estimates.
Reporting from Rome by Alvise Armellini, Giselda Vagnoni, Angelo Amante, Crispian Balmer Writing by Alvise Armellini Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Crispian Balmer, Barbara Lewis and Frances Kerry
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.