ROME: Forty-one mig­rants are thought to have died in a shipwreck last week in the central Medit­erranean, Italian authorities and United Nations agencies said on Wedn­es­day, citing survivors who have been taken to the Ita­lian island of Lampedusa.

Local public prosecutor Salvatore Vella and three UN agencies confirmed media reports that four people who survived the shipwreck had told rescuers they were on a boat carrying 45 people, including three children.

The survivors — a 13-year-old boy, a woman and two men — arrived in Lampedusa on Wednes­day, almost six days after the sinking of their boat, the Inter­natio­nal Organis­ation for Migration (IOM), Unicef and UNHCR, said in a joint statement.

The boat had set off on Aug 3 from Tunisia’s Sfax, a hot spot in the migration crisis, but capsized and sank during the night after being hit by a big wave, the survivors were quoted by multiple sources, including Ansa news agency, as saying.

The Italian Red Cross and the Sea-Watch charity rescue said the four had survived by hanging on to life jackets or other inflatable rubber devices and then finding another empty boat at sea, on which they spent several days adrift.

The migrants arrived in Lampedusa exhausted and in a state of shock and are due to be questioned by police, prosecutor Vella said. They are presumed to have had no food or drinking water until their rescue on Tuesday.

Vella, who has opened an investigation, said they were picked up after a surveillance plane of the EU border agency Frontex spotted them about 54 nautical miles (100 km) off Zuwarah in Libya.

‘Prohibitive’ conditions

The central Mediterra­nean is one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes. More than 22,000 people have died or gone missing in its waters since 2014, according to the IOM.

The UN agencies said migrants who set off from Tunisia in recent days fa­­c­ed “prohibitive weat­her and sea conditions”, making their jo­­­urneys on un­­seaworthy iron boa­ts “disproportionally dangerous”.

The agencies reiterated a call for governments to dedicate more resources to Mediterranean search and rescue missions — an expensive and politically sensitive endeavour for which there is little appetite in EU capitals.

On Sunday, the Italian coast guard reported two other shipwrecks, with 57 survivors, two dead and more than 30 missing, and media reports said they also involved at least one vessel that had departed from Sfax on Aug 3.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2023