Milan, Italy.- At least 13 people were killed when an overloaded ship shipwrecked near the island of Lampedusa before being rescued, the Italian Coast Guard reported, which brought 22 others to the mainland. The smuggling vessel was overturned on Monday as a patrol boat moved migrants on board in the waters 10 kilometres off the coast of Lampedusa just after midnight.22 migrants were rescued from sea and 13 bodies recovered , two immediately and 11 during a subsequent search operation. The coast guard said all the bodies that were recovered were women’s. Doctors Without Borders said the Italian authorities have asked him to join the ship he operates, Ocean Viking.
Initial reports issued by authorities in Sicily, who received the distress call, put the number of migrants on board the vessel at approximately 50. NGOs said that some 30 migrants, including eight children, could be missing from the ship that sailed from Túnez.La Coast Guard had no further information on the number of missing persons. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) noted that the shipwreck “remarks that urgent action is needed to address the situation in the Mediterranean Sea.” In Geneva, Charlie Yaxley, a spokesperson for UNHCR, called on the European Union to resume its search-and-rescue operation in the Mediterranean, where more than 1,000 migrants have been killed so far this year, most of them at the dangerous crossing from Libya.
In the absence of EU-coordinated bailouts, this work has largely fallen on humanitarian rescue vessels, which both Italy and Malta have repeatedly denied them docking at their ports. Meanwhile, the Spanish aid group Open Arms said on Monday that it rescued 44 people, including an infant and a child for a few months, from a wooden boat trying to reach European shores. Gerard Canals, head of mission to the Open Arms rescue ship, said they found the ship on Sunday night in Malta’s rescue zone, about 80 kilometres away from the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Original source in Spanish
