Baby among 59 dead after boat carrying more than 100 migrants breaks apart
A dozen children, including a young baby, were among at least 59 people killed when an overcrowded boat carrying migrants broke apart in rough seas off Italy’s southern coast.
The shipwreck took place near Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort on the eastern coast of Calabria, the region that forms the tip of Italy’s boot.
Fighting back tears, Cutro’s mayor Antonio Ceraso said he had seen ‘a spectacle that you would never want to see in your life… a gruesome sight… that stays with you for all your life’.
Emergency doctor Laura De Paoli told ANSA: ‘When we got to the point of the shipwreck we saw corpses floating everywhere and we rescued two men who were holding up a child. Sadly, the little one was dead.’
Manuela Curra, a provincial government official, told Reuters that 81 people had survived the shipwreck. Twenty of them were hospitalised, including one person in intensive care.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who travelled to the scene, said up to 30 people might still be missing.
The vessel had set sail from Turkey several days ago with migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and several other countries.
Survivors described up to 150 people on board when it crashed against rocks early on Sunday.
One has been arrested on migrant trafficking charges, the Guardia di Finanza customs police said.
Initial reports from ANSA and other Italian news agencies, spoke of 27 bodies washed up on the beach and more found in the water.
Ignazio Mangione, an Italian Red Cross official, told SkyTG24 that very few of the children believed to have been on the boat survived.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed ‘deep sorrow’ for the deaths.
Blaming human traffickers, she vowed to block migrant sea departures to prevent such disasters.
She said: ‘It’s inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the “price” of a ticket paid by them in the false prospect for a safe voyage.’
Pope Francis, the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina and long a vocal advocate for migrants’ rights, said he was praying for everyone caught up in the shipwreck.
He told the faithful in St Peter’s Square: ‘I pray for each of them, for the missing and the other migrants who survived.’
The pontiff added he also was praying for the rescuers ‘and for those who give welcome’ to the migrants.
Italy is one of the main landing points for migrants trying to enter Europe by sea, with many seeking to travel on to richer northern European nations.
The so-called central Mediterranean route is known as one of the world’s most dangerous.
The United Nations Missing Migrants Project has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014.
More than 220 have died or disappeared this year, it estimates.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.