A seven meter long boat sank off the island of Lampedusa last night. 46 people, including seven minors and 13 women, were rescued by an Italian Coast Guard ship. Three people are still missing, including the mother of a toddler. The open sea search is ongoing, authorities said.
The castaways, who came from Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cameroon and Gambia, were taken to Lampedusa. They had started from Sfax in Tunisia.
Twelve landings involving a total of 611 people were reported on Lampedusa yesterday. Most of the boats had departed from Sfax in Tunisia and Sabratah in Libya, authorities said. There are 2,242 people in the hotspot of Lampedusa, but there are only 400 places.
Two suspected smugglers arrested
The Tunisian Coast Guard last night stopped 12 boats with 320 people on board, which had left for Italy and got into trouble off Sfax and Nabeul.
The rescued people are from various sub-Saharan African countries, another 20 are Tunisians, the spokesman for the National Guard said. Two suspected smugglers who were preparing to make an illegal crossing were arrested.
At 40,000, the number of people seeking protection who arrived in Italy this year is four times as large as in the same period in 2022. 130,000 people are being accommodated in Italian reception facilities, which would be under great pressure, according to the Interior Ministry in Rome.
