Two useless and 57 rescued from migrant shipwrecks off Lampedusa
A
t least two folks died and 57 have been rescued after two shipwrecks off the southern island of Lampedusa in Italy.
The Ansa news company reported that two migrant boats sunk on their strategy to Europe after setting off from the port of Sfax on Saturday.
One was carrying 48 folks, the second 42, Ansa mentioned, including that the coastguard discovered the survivors about 23 nautical miles (43km) south-west of Lampedusa.
The victims are believed to be a girl from Ivory Coast and her one-year-old baby.
More than 2,000 folks have arrived in Lampedusa in the previous couple of days after being rescued at sea by Italian patrol boats and NGO teams, as sturdy winds additional complicate the state of affairs across the island.
About 20 folks have been caught since Friday on a cliff after their boat crashed in opposition to rocks upon arrival in Lampedusa, with the coastguard unable to achieve them through sea or helicopter, native media mentioned.
On Sunday, the NGO group Open Arms wrote on the X social media website that it had lastly begun disembarking 195 folks rescued at sea within the southern Italian port of Brindisi after greater than two days of crusing in tough seas.
Italy’s rightwing authorities has adopted a coverage of assigning far-away ports to charity ships, relatively than letting them disembark rescued folks in nearer Lampedusa or Sicily, with the intention of spreading arrivals throughout the nation.
NGOs complain that this will increase their navigation prices, prolongs the distress of survivors, and reduces the period of time charity ships can patrol the areas of the Mediterranean the place shipwrecks are extra widespread.
Italy is experiencing a pointy surge in sea migration, with virtually 92,000 arrivals recorded to date this yr, in response to inside ministry information final up to date on Friday, in contrast with greater than 42,600 in the identical interval in 2022.