CROTONE, Italy, February 27 (Portal) – Rescuers recovered four more bodies on Monday, a day after a wooden sailing boat carrying migrants to Europe smashed onto rocks off southern Italy in stormy weather, bringing the death toll to 63, including at least 14 children .
Rescuers said most migrants were from Afghanistan, as well as Iran, Somalia, Syria and elsewhere. According to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, there were 20 Pakistani nationals on the boat, four missing and 16 survivors of the overnight shipwreck.
Many of the victims washed ashore near where the ship sank near Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort on Calabria’s east coast, while some of the bodies were recovered from the sea.
“We met a survivor who fled Afghanistan with his sister from the Taliban. She didn’t survive,” said Sergio Di Dato, project coordinator for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
MSF is providing psychological support to survivors, including a 12-year-old boy from Afghanistan who lost all nine family members who traveled with him, including his parents and four siblings.
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“People are in shock, very exhausted, some of them say they saw relatives fall into the water and disappear or die,” Save the Children, another charity offering help, said on Twitter.
Dozens of coffins were laid out in a sports hall in the neighboring town of Crotone ahead of an eventual funeral. Locals left flowers, candles and a teddy bear outside on metal railings to show their respect.
An imam led Muslim prayers for the victims, and a Catholic bishop also came to pray and offer his condolences. Some survivors sat wrapped in thermal blankets in front of the gymnasium and cried.
Local authorities said 81 people survived the disaster, but it was believed that between 180 and 200 people had boarded the ship as it departed from Izmir in western Turkey, suggesting many more passengers died are or are missing.
The shipwreck has sparked debate over migration in Europe and Italy, where the recently elected right-wing government’s harsh new laws on aid agencies to rescue migrants have drawn criticism from the UN and others.
“These tragedies are the result of the tragic collateral damage of Italian and European politics, border protection and the restriction of safe and regular passage to Europe,” said Marco Bertotto, MSF Italy Program Director.
[1/6] A view of the wreckage of a shipwreck in southern Italy that killed dozens of migrants after the boat they were traveling in crashed onto the rocks in Cutro, Italy February 27, 2023. Portal/Remo Casilli
“STOP THE DEPARTURES”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in an interview that she had written to European Union institutions to demand immediate action by the bloc to halt migrant boat trips to prevent further deaths.
“The more people leave, the greater the risk of dying,” she told public television RAI. “The only way to address this problem seriously and with humanity is to halt departures.”
Her Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, meanwhile, drew widespread criticism after he accused both migrants and traffickers of taking their families on dangerous sea voyages.
“Desperation can never justify travel in conditions that endanger the lives of their children,” he said.
“Dear Minister Piantedosi, when a mother puts her child, the most precious thing she has, on a boat, it is because she is fleeing greater danger and despair,” said Raffaella Paita, senator of the centrist Italia Viva party.
“It would be wise to think before you speak. They have no humanity,” she added.
The minister fired back at opponents, saying it was “shameful” to polemicize over his words and said the government was also determined to open legal channels for migration.
He mentioned the “humanitarian corridors,” an initiative by Christian groups that he says had flown more than 600 migrants to Italy since October, when Meloni’s administration was installed.
During the same period, at least 41,000 migrants arrived in Italy via boat trips.
The vast majority of migrant boats left North Africa, but increasing numbers of migrants left Turkey over the past two years, including around 16,000 in 2022 – 15% of all arrivals.
The United Nations Missing Migrants Project has registered more than 20,000 deaths and missing people in the central Mediterranean since 2014, including more than 220 this year, making it the world’s most dangerous migration route.
Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni, Angelo Amante, Gianluca Semeraro and Federico Maccioni; writings by Alvise Armellini, Angelo Amante and Crispian Balmer; Edited by Bernadette Baum and Angus MacSwan
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