Children among 59 refugees drowned
ROme: At least 59 migrants, including young children and a newborn baby, drowned off the coast of Italy when the packed vessel bringing them from Turkey overturned and broke up in stormy weather.
Rescuers found corpses washed up along the beach at Steccato di Cutro in Calabria after the wooden boat was flipped over and shattered by waves close to the shore.
“It was a horrible scene; dozens of bodies washed up including children and a newborn baby, alongside survivors who made it ashore suffering from shock and close to hypothermia,” said Ignazio Mangione, a Red Cross volunteer.
The rescue centre in the coastal city of Crotone said 12 of the 59 victims were children, including a newborn, and 33 were women.
Some 80 people survived the wrecking of the 17m wooden boat, which had sailed from Izmir in Turkey about four days earlier carrying up to 170 passengers.
Coastguard officers on jet skis continued to patrol the rough seas searching for bodies and more survivors on Sunday, local time. A priest blessed corpses placed in bodybags on the sand.
Waves pushed wreckage from the boat on to the beach while survivors in blankets, mainly from Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan, shivered in the strong wind. One person was arrested as a suspected trafficker, police said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “deep sorrow” for the tragedy, which is the deadliest migrant disaster by official toll in the Mediterranean since 127 died off the Syrian coast in September, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Its monitors say 20,000 people have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean since 2014.
Italy has recorded a sharp rise in migrant arrivals this year: 13,067 have landed, up from 5273 by this time last year, embarrassing Ms Meloni who swept to power in September promising to cut migration numbers.
Migrants sailing from Turkey – about 15 per cent of the total last year – are often trying to avoid being stuck in a Greek migrant camp or spending months working their way through the Balkans to reach Europe.
With the price of a passage reaching as much as €12,000 ($18,800), rescuers have reported seeing doctors, lawyers and well-to-do migrants from Syria and Afghanistan leaving Turkey by boat.
Most migrants sailing to Italy depart from Libya and Tunisia.
Ms Meloni has passed legislation punishing charity boats that make repeated rescues of people sailing from Libya, claiming they act as a pull factor. Charities say migrants sail even when they are absent.
Reacting to the shipwreck in Calabria, Matteo Piantedosi, the interior minister, said: “It is a huge tragedy which shows the absolute need to act firmly against irregular migration channels.”
Failing to stop migrants sailing “causes tragedies like today’s”, he added.
In a statement, however, the IOM said the answer was to make it easier for migrants to find safe, legal channels for transit “so they do not have to make dangerous journeys seeking safety, protection and a better life”.
Sergio Mattarella, the Italian President, said: “Many of these migrants came from Afghanistan and Iran, fleeing conditions of great hardship.”