Dozens Saved From Italian Shipwreck
The captain of an aid ship recounted how his crew used axes and hammers to rescue migrants trapped in the cargo hold of a sinking wooden boat off the coast of Italy.
Ingo Veert, captain of the RESQSHIP aid vessel, said his crew initially saved 50 migrants stranded on the deck of the distressed boat near Lampedusa. They then broke through the ship to rescue two men trapped below deck. Unfortunately, 10 other men were found dead in the ship's hold.
Aid workers reported that 64 people remained missing at sea after another vessel sank near Calabria, about 125 miles off the Italian coast. One of the 12 survivors died after reaching shore, according to the Italian coastguard.
Survivors from the shipwreck near Lampedusa were handed over to the Italian coastguard and taken ashore on Monday morning, while the deceased were being towed to the island, RESQSHIP said.
The boats carried migrants who had departed from Libya and Turkey, with reports indicating they had paid around $3,500 (£2,759) each for the journey.
Captain Veert, who commands the Nadir rescue ship, said the first reports of "a completely overloaded migrant boat" came over the radio around 01:30 local time. By the time the rescue boat reached the vessel around 03:00, it was "almost sinking with water coming in and people completely nervous."
His crew provided life jackets to the survivors and used an axe and hammer to rescue two individuals from the wreck. One survivor was found "almost not breathing" with a body temperature of 32C.
"All are very young men between 18 and 25," Veert added. The boat had left Libya, carrying migrants from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as reported by UN agencies UNHCR, IOM, and UNICEF in a joint statement.
In the separate disaster near Calabria, aid agencies noted that a number of children were among those missing. Shakilla Mohammadi of MSF reported that 66 people, including at least 26 children, were unaccounted for. Some children were just a few months old.
"Entire families from Afghanistan are presumed dead. They left Turkey eight days ago and had taken in water for three or four days. They told us they had no life vests and some vessels did not stop to help them," she said in a statement.
The Mediterranean is the deadliest known migration route in the world.
More than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing in its waters since 2014, according to UN data.
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