More than 40 dead in a new shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa

A total of 41 people have died in a new shipwreck registered in the last hours off the Italian island of Lampedusa, in southern Italy, according to the testimonies of four survivors who were rescued by a Coast Guard patrol boat.

The rescued explained to the authorities that the boat had left Sfax (Tunisia) last Thursday and that, after about six hours of navigation, the ship capsized due to a large wave and the 41 victims, including three children, fell into the sea. , local media report.

According to the media, the four rescued were sighted on Tuesday by a Frontex European border guard plane and, as they were off the Libyan coast, the coast guard of that country was notified, but they did not intervene.. For this reason, the Italian patrol boats went looking for them, which upon their arrival verified that the survivors had been rescued by the freighter, after which they were transferred by the coast guard to Lampedusa.

The four survivors, two men, a woman and a child from the Ivory Coast and Guinea Conakry, are in a state of shock.

Only 15 of the migrants, who were traveling in a precarious metal boat, wore life jackets, but they drowned anyway, the migrants added in their account to the social services and mediators of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who regularly work in the island, the closest Italian territory to Africa.

Last Saturday, two other shipwrecks were reported off Lampedusa in which 34 people died, although only three corpses could be rescued in the middle of a strong storm and it was also the 57 rescued who explained that their travel companions had fallen. Sea.

The reception center is overflowing

The landings do not stop in Lampedusa, in whose reception center, with a capacity for 300 people, more than 1,500 crowd, after the transfer of migrants from the island to the Italian peninsula began.

It is expected that this Wednesday some 1,100 of the 1,577 guests at the center will be transferred to the Sicilian towns of Porto Empedocle and Augusta. According to the latest data from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, so far this year and up to August 4, 92,000 migrants have disembarked on the Italian coasts, more than double the number of 42,640 in the same period last year.