A boat leaving this Thursday, August 3 from Sfax (Tunisia) failed with 45 migrants on board. Only four survivors have been found. Forty-one people, including three children, are still missing. Several UN agencies for refugees (UNHCR), children (UNICEF) and migration (IOM) deplore in a joint press release this “terrible shipwreck which occurred between Thursday 3 and Friday 4 August in the Mediterranean”.
“The iron boat would have turned around” in the face of “weather conditions making crossings on these small iron boats unsuitable for navigation very dangerous”, according to the press release. “This demonstrates the absolute lack of scruples of traffickers who, in this way, expose migrants and refugees to very high risks of death at sea”, denounced the three UN agencies.
According to figures compiled by the United Nations, more than 1,800 people have already died since January in shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean, the deadliest migration route in the world. That’s more than double last year.
The four survivors – a 13-year-old unaccompanied minor, a woman and two men – were rescued by a merchant ship and landed on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, located between Tunisia and Sicily, on Wednesday.
Faced with this new tragedy, the three UN agencies “reaffirm the need for coordinated search and rescue mechanisms and continue to call on States to increase resources and capacities to effectively meet their responsibilities”.
Nearly 94,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores since the start of the year, more than double compared to the same period last year, according to figures published by the Ministry of the Interior.
