An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone has been rescued as the only survivor of a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa after being at sea for three days, a rescue charity said on Wednesday.
Germany’s CompassCollective said the crew on its ship were on their way to another emergency when they heard screaming from the water and picked up the girl, wearing a life jacket and hanging on a pair of tire tubes, around 3 a.m.
She told them that she had set out from the Tunisian city of Sfax with 45 people in a metal boat that sank in a storm.
Charity crews took care of the girl and took her to Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than the rest of Italy and is often the first landing point for migrants.
The Red Cross said that after medical assistance, the girl was taken to a migrant holding center where Italian Red Cross staff and volunteers were caring for her.
Nicola Dell’Arciprete, head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF in Italy, said, “During this festive period in which most of us are fortunate to be with our loved ones, my condolences go out to the girl from Sierra Leone.”
“Another tragedy that has increased the number of dead and missing in the central Mediterranean.”
The sea migration route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy and Malta is one of the most dangerous in the world, with more than 24,300 people missing or dead since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration.
The NGO Mediterranea said in a statement that it feared three more migrant boats had disappeared on the route between Tunisia and Italy in recent weeks, and urged authorities to launch a search operation to rescue possible survivors. .
“Life at risk in the sea cannot be abandoned,” said Luca Casarini of the Mediterranean.
Italy says its tough approach to immigration is contributing to the decline in sea arrivals. So far this year, it has recorded about 64,000 migrant landings, compared to more than 153,000 in the same period in 2023.
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)Rescue(T)Shipwrecks(T)Sierra Leone
