24 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
At least one person has died and another 20 are reportedly missing due to the sinking near Italy of a boat carrying migrants and refugees, in a new migration tragedy for an area that has accumulated more than half a thousand deaths since the beginning of the year.
A fishing boat rescued 34 survivors of this shipwreck and located a body after the sinking of a vessel barely seven meters in length. These migrants had left the Tunisian coast on Saturday night, according to the first investigations reported by the newspaper ‘La Repubblica’.
Once evacuated in an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat, the survivors, including six minors, reported that there were some 20 missing people who were also traveling in the boat. The authorities have activated a search device.
On the island of Lampedusa alone, some 640 migrants arrived on Sunday, divided into 17 boats. The Government of Italy estimates that more than 35,000 people have arrived since January 1, according to data updated until April 21 by the Ministry of the Interior.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), for its part, has registered 537 deaths in the central Mediterranean, which has accumulated more than 20,700 deaths since 2014.
