'She had been floating in the water for three days': 11-year-old girl survives after migrant boat capsizes

This Sunday, December 8, several dozen migrants are missing since the sinking in the Mediterranean Sea of ​​a boat from Tunisia. An 11-year-old girl survived and was rescued by an NGO.

About forty migrants are considered missing off the Italian island of Lampedusa, after the sole survivor, an 11-year-old girl, said that the boat she was on sank three days ago, a humanitarian NGO said on Wednesday.

“We “Let's assume she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and the other 44 people drowned,” wrote Compass Collective, an NGO involved in migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean, in a statement. after saving the girl.

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The crew of the NGO ship Trotamar III “heard the calls in the dark” of the girl on Wednesday morning at around 02:20 (01:20 GMT) as he was heading to another emergency.

“The 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone had been floating in the water for three days with two makeshift life jackets made of air-filled inner tubes and a simple life jacket,”, the NGO added.

12 hours in the water

Doctor Mauro Marino, who examined her, told the newspaper La Repubblica that he thought the girl had been in the water for about 12 hours.

She told rescuers that the metal boat had set off from Sfax, Tunisia, and had sunk in a storm, according to the statement. She “had no drinking water or food with her and was hypothermic, but she was responsive and oriented”, according to the same source.

A spokeswoman for Mediterranean Hope, another humanitarian NGO, told AFP that the girl was recovering in hospital.

Italian news agency ANSA reported that coastguard and police boats were checking the area where the boat sank on Wednesday, but had so far found no bodies or traces of clothing.

Three other shipwrecks

Another NGO, Mediterranea Saving Humans, expressed concern on Wednesday that at least three other shipwrecks may have occurred recently between Tunisia and Lampedusa.

Each boat – carrying 45 people, 75 people and 45 people respectively – left Tunisia on different days in late November, according to Alarm Phone, whose hotline receives distress calls from migrants at sea.

“Alarm Phone immediately communicated all the information in its possession to the competent authorities in the region, namely the rescue centres in Tunisia, Malta and Italy, but no information has been provided by them,”, Mediterranea wrote in a statement.

So far this year, 2,050 migrants have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the central Mediterranean, the most murderer in the world.