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Dozens of migrants drown as boat breaks apart off Italy
ROME — A wooden boat crowded with migrants smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart before dawn Sunday off the Italian coast, authorities said. Rescuers recovered nearly 60 bodies, and dozens more people were missing in the rough waters.
Officials feared the death toll could top 100 since some survivors indicated the boat had as many as 200 passengers when it set out from Turkey, U.N. refugee and migration agencies said.
At least 80 people were found alive, including some who reached the shore after the shipwreck just off Calabria’s coastline along the Ionian Sea, the Italian Coast Guard said. One of the agency’s motorboats rescued two men suffering from hypothermia and recovered the body of a boy.
Firefighters said 59 bodies had been found.
One man was taken into custody for questioning after fellow survivors indicated he was a trafficker, state TV said.
The boat collided with the reefs in wind-whipped seas. Three chunks of the vessel ended up on the beach near the town of Steccato di Cutro, where splintered pieces of bright blue wood littered the sand like matchsticks.
“All of the survivors are adults,” Red Cross volunteer Ignazio Mangione said. ”Unfortunately, all the children are among the missing or were found dead on the beach.”
A baby and young twins were reported among the dead.
Rescuers said two men who survived were spotted trying to save children by holding them over their heads as waves buffeted them. But the children died, state TV said.
The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said it was offering psychological assistance to survivors, who included a 16-year-old boy from Afghanistan whose sister, 28, made it to the beach but then died.
The group said the teen “hasn’t found the courage to tell his parents.”
Another survivor was a 12-year-old boy from Afghanistan who lost his entire family, including four siblings.
Italian state TV quoted survivors as saying the boat set out five days ago from Turkey.
Standing next to the wreckage on the beach, a reporter for Italian RAI state TV noted a life preserver bearing the word “Smyrna,” a Turkish port also known as Izmir.
More than 170 migrants were estimated to have been aboard the ship, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said in a joint statement.
Among them were “children and entire families,’’ according to the U.N. statement, with most of the passengers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
Earlier, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said some 200 people had been crowded into a 66-foot boat.
The rescue operation involved a helicopter and police aircraft, as well as vessels from state firefighter squads, the Coast Guard and border police. Local fishermen also joined in the search.
The bodies were brought to the sports stadium in the nearest city, Crotone.
A priest said a few of the bodies washed up on a stretch of beach near his town.
“While I blessed them, I was asking myself why do we arrive after the deaths,’’ the Rev. Rosario Morrone told state TV. “We need to get there before.”
State TV said 22 survivors were taken to a hospital.
Pope Francis told the faithful in St. Peter’s Square that he was praying for the dead, the missing and the survivors, as well as for rescuers “and for those who give welcome” to the migrants.
“It’s an enormous tragedy,” Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI. “In solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery” for the dead.
In 2022, some 105,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores, some 38,000 more than in 2021, according to Interior Ministry figures.