Ten migrants dead, dozens missing after two shipping accidents off Italy

One of the twelve survivors died after disembarkation, the coast guard said.

Rome:

Ten migrants have died and dozens more are believed to be missing following two shipping accidents off the coast of Italy, a migrant rescue organization and the coast guard said on Monday.

Rescue workers who came to the aid of migrants on a wooden boat off Lampedusa found ten bodies below deck, the German aid organization ResQship reported on X.

The crew of the ResQship ship Nadir “is currently caring for 51 people on board. For ten people, rescue came too late,” the German aid organization said.

“A total of 61 people were on the water-filled wooden boat. Our crew was able to evacuate 51 people, two of whom were unconscious – they had to be freed with an axe,” it said.

“The ten dead are lying in the flooded lower deck of the boat,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Italian coast guard said it was searching for people who fell overboard after another shipping accident off the coast of Calabria. According to media reports, survivors say up to 60 migrants are missing.

The coast guard announced that since yesterday evening it has been searching for possible missing persons “following the shipwreck of a sailing boat presumably leaving Turkey with migrants on board.”

The rescue operations began after a “Mayday call from a French pleasure boat off the Italian coast,” it said.

The French ship alerted authorities to “the presence of the half-sunken boat” before taking twelve surviving migrants on board.

They were then transferred to an Italian Coast Guard boat, which took them to the town of Roccella Ionica in southern Italy.

One of the twelve survivors died after disembarkation, the coast guard said.

According to the ANSA news agency, around 50 migrants were missing after the shipwreck. Radio Radicale put the number at 64, adding that those missing at sea were from Afghanistan and Iran.

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