More than 40 people, including a baby, have died in a migrant shipwreck off the Calabrian coast. Dozens survived after the boat broke up in rough seas.
Bodies have washed up on Calabrian beaches as a migrant shipwreck sends more than 40 people to their deaths. Reportedly, the boat broke up while trying to land over 100 people near Crotone.
Reports state there are around 80 survivors. Bodies have been recovered from the beach at a nearby seaside resort.
The coastguard released a statement. “At the current time, 80 people have been recovered alive, including some who managed to reach the shore after the sinking. Forty-three bodies have been found along the coastline.”
It is unclear where this boat had travelled from. Italian news agencies are reporting those aboard were from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
The Italian authorities have mounted a large search-and-rescue operation on land and at sea.
“There had been landings but never a tragedy like this,” the mayor of Cruto, Antonio Ceraso, has told Rai News.
“Inhumane” to exchange lives for price of a ‘ticket’
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “deep sorrow” for the incident. She laid the blame firmly at the door of the traffickers.
“It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of the ‘ticket’ they paid in the false perspective of a safe journey,” she said in a statement.
“The government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so.”
Meloni’s government pushed through a new law tightening the rules on rescues. At a recent EU Council summit, the leaders agreed there is a need to pay more attention to controlling the bloc’s external border.
Crucially for Italy, it also agreed that this a matter for the bloc as a whole, not just the countries with Mediterranean sea borders. “This approach is put down in black and white by a sentence that it had never been possible to put down before: ‘immigration is an EU problem and needs an EU response”, said Meloni.
Meloni is also looking for a deal with North Africa to keep migrants there. It would be similar to the €6billion deal the EU cut with Turkey a few years ago.
Pope Francis, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, said he was praying for everyone caught up in the shipwreck.
