Shipwreck of migrants in Italy: death toll rises to at least 62
Rescuers work on the beach where the bodies of several refugees were found following the sinking of the boat carrying at least 120 people.
Italian Coast Guard continue their research at sea and along the coast near Crotone, Calabria, the day after the sinking of a migrant boat crossing the Mediterranean whose toll continues to increase.
After the discovery of the bodies of new victims stranded on the coast, the death toll rose to 62 dead, the coast guard told AFP on Monday morning, but this figure is expected to climb further. The previous count put the death toll at 59.
NGOs cared for children who saw their loved ones drown when the overloaded boat, caught in a storm, swamped. #x27;is broken on rocks on Sunday at dawn a few meters from the coast.
A 12-year-old Afghan boy has lost his entire family, nine people in all: his four siblings, his parents and other close family members, Sergio di Dato, head of the x27;a team of psychologists sent to the scene by the NGO Médecins sans frontières (MSF) to help the survivors.
The remains of the boat that was wrecked along the Italian coast. The report by Lise Villeneuve.
Italian police and AFP footage showed wood debris scattered over a hundred meters along the beach.< /p>
Firefighters from the nearby town of Cutro mobilized a boat on Monday to launch a new search, aided by helicopters flying over the area.
At the village of Le Castella, where a 15th century fortress dominates the coast, an AFP journalist witnessed coastguard operations recovering the body of a woman, apparently in her twenties years.
Italian NGO Save the Children tweeted that they have cared for survivors from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and from Syria, including a dozen minors traveling with their families. There are many missing minors, she added.
According to stories from survivors reported by the NGO, during the night, near the coast, they heard a great crash and then they all fell into the water. Some said they saw their loved ones fall into the water and disappear, or die.
The boat had left Izmir in Turkey last week and three human smugglers have already been arrested, while police are searching for a fourth suspect, Italian media reported on Monday.
This new tragedy made the front page of the Italian press. The massacre of the innocents, headlined the Turin daily La Stampa with a photo of the wreckage of the boat. The boat breaks 100 meters from the shore: the massacre of migrants, wrote the front page of the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
Expressing her deep pain, the head of the far-right government, Giorgia Meloni, on Sunday deemed it a crime to put a boat barely 20 meters into the sea with 200 people on board and a bad weather forecast.
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Italy, a country of first entry where hundreds of thousands of migrants have arrived in recent years, criticizes its partners in the European Union for a lack of solidarity in the distribution of the latter, although a large number of them subsequently leave the peninsula for other countries.
Italy's geographical location makes it a destination of choice for asylum seekers crossing from North Africa to Europe.
Aboard its boat, the Geo Barents, the NGO Doctors Without Borders monitors the Mediterranean in search of boats in distress.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, almost 14,000 migrants have landed in Italy since the beginning of the year, compared to around 5,200 during the same period last year. last year and 4200 in 2021.
NGOs recover at sea only a small percentage of shipwrecked migrants wishing to arrive in Europe, most being rescued by guard ships coast or the Navy.
The government, however, accuses these NGOs of st stimulate through their action the arrival of migrants and encourage traffickers.
