Rome. Dozens of migrants were dramatically rescued by Italy as they capsized at sea or clung to a rocky reef on Sunday, after three boats launched by smugglers from North Africa capsized in rough waters in separate incidents over the weekend. Survivors said about 30 migrants disappeared from the capsized boats.
In a particularly risky operation, two helicopters battled against strong winds to bring to safety, one by one, the migrants who had been stranded for almost two days on a steep and rocky reef on the small island of Lampedusa. Firefighters said all the migrants, including a child, who had clung to the rocks after their boat hit the reef early Saturday morning, had been saved.
In total, 34 migrants had been stranded on the reef for two nights, including a woman eight months pregnant, according to the Giornale di Sicilia newspaper. The woman was taken to a hospital.
Some were rescued by a fire-fighting helicopter and others by an Italian Air Force helicopter, which lowered expert climbers to the reef and hauled migrants up one by one from the rocks.
The helicopter operation was launched after the coast guard determined that rough seas would make it impossible for rescue boats to safely approach the craggy rocks.
Meanwhile, survivors of two boats that capsized on Saturday about 42.5 kilometers (23 nautical miles) southwest of Lampedusa told rescuers that about 30 fellow migrants were missing. The Coast Guard reported that in two operations it had saved 57 immigrants and recovered the bodies of a child and a woman.
Coast guardsmen lowered a wide rope ladder and helped load the migrants onto their rescue craft, tossed and tossed by windswept waves. At least one coast guard diver jumped into the sea to help guide a raft, launched into the Mediterranean by rescuers, so that survivors could hold on to it as it was pulled toward the vessel, according to details obtained from coast guard video of the rescue.
For years, migrants have boarded unseaworthy smuggling boats to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea and try to reach the shores of southern Europe, hoping to be granted asylum or to find family or work, especially in northern European countries.
Before the two bodies were recovered on Saturday, a total of 1,814 migrants were known to have perished in 2023 trying to cross the Mediterranean into Italy in boats launched from Tunisia or Libya, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, a spokesman for the IOM, the UN agency for migration.
