A migrant boat was shipwrecked on Thursday off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, leaving around 40 people missing, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy, Chiara Cardoletti, told AFP on Friday. . Among the missing is at least one newborn, she wrote in a tweet, the content of which she confirmed to AFP by telephone.
The iron boat, which left Sfax in Tunisia, was carrying 46 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Cameroon), a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration told AFP. (IMO), Flavio Di Giacomo. The boat, faced with bad weather conditions (strong wind and big waves), capsized: “Some survivors were taken to Lampedusa and others brought back to Tunisia”, still according to Flavio Di Giacomo. “Among the missing are seven women and a minor. The survivors are all adult males,” he added.
“Since November, we have noticed more arrivals of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa than Tunisians” through the Tunisian route, “safer than the Libyan route because it is shorter”, he observed. A phenomenon due, according to him, “to the strong discrimination that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa suffer in Tunisia, which they therefore flee”.
“It is unacceptable to continue counting the dead at the gates of Europe,” denounced Chiara Cardoletti, referring to the deadly shipwrecks of migrant boats that have already occurred in Italy, Greece and Spain. Flavio Di Giacomo also underlined the fragility of iron boats, badly welded, arriving from Tunisia and sinking at the first damage. “We are therefore not aware of certain shipwrecks”, he lamented, calling for “patrols of European ships to monitor the Tunisian route as well as the Libyan route, otherwise we will witness a disaster this summer. “.
An opinion shared by the UNHCR spokesperson in Italy: “A rescue mechanism at sea coordinated and shared between States is now also a matter of conscience”, she said. Located about 145 kilometers from the Tunisian coast, Lampedusa is one of the main entry points for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Last year, more than 46,000 people landed there, out of a total of 105,000 arrivals in Italy, according to the UNHCR.
