The bodies of eight migrants were recovered by the Italian coastguard during an overnight operation that also rescued 42 survivors in the central Mediterranean off the island of Lampedusa, authorities said on Friday.
Two other people, an infant and a man, fell overboard during the crossing and were presumed dead, the Coast Guard said in a statement, citing survivors’ accounts.
Survivors said the baby died of exposure and the distraught mother threw the newborn into the sea, according to the ANSA news agency. The man then threw himself in an attempt to recover the body, disappearing in the waves.
Video of the rescue shows the survivors crammed into a small open trawler, which was adrift with a malfunctioning engine. Rescuers warned them to sit down and not move before throwing in a rope to carry them to safety.
Everyone on board was soaked, cold and dehydrated, and the deceased is believed to have died of hypothermia, ANSA said.
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The survivors said they departed the Tunisian port of Sfax before dawn on Saturday, ANSA said. They were among some 200 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan African nations, who arrived on Lampedusa on three barges overnight.
The mayor of Lampedusa, Filippo Mannino, has launched an appeal to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, asking that “the government does not leave us alone to manage this enormous tragedy. Help us. We are no longer able to cope”.
The Italian coastguard has recovered the bodies of eight migrants during an operation on an island off the coast of Italy. The country’s coast guard also rescued 42 survivors.
(ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
Charity boats operating in the deadly central Mediterranean have complained that a new Italian decree forcing them to return to port after each rescue endangers the lives of migrants departing North Africa by leaving search and rescue area uncovered . This is compounded by a new practice of assigning ports in northern Italy, which take days of sailing to reach.
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The Council of Europe this week urged the Italian government to consider withdrawing the decree, saying it could hamper search and rescue operations by non-governmental agencies, “depriving people in distress of life-saving assistance by NGOs on the deadliest migratory route in the Mediterranean”.
In a letter to the Italian interior minister, the human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatović, also repeated an invitation to Italy to suspend its cooperation with the Libyan government on interceptions at sea, due to the likelihood that migrants returned to Libya will suffer torture, rape, slavery, exploitation and detention.
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The latest call comes after Italy agreed over the weekend to supply Libya with five new coast guard vessels to help stem the movement of migrants to Europe. The deal was announced during a visit by Meloni which secured an $8 billion gas deal.
The central Mediterranean Sea is a perilous crossing that has claimed 20,285 lives since the United Nations immigration office began monitoring data in 2014, compared to 5,000 in the eastern and western Mediterranean combined. Many of the victims are missing at sea and are presumed dead, based on survivors’ accounts.
