At least two people have died and more than 30 are missing after two ships carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the UN’s migration agency said on Sunday.
The two boats had set off from the port of Sfax in Tunisia carrying 48 and 42 people respectively.
Italian coastguards recovered the bodies of a woman from the Ivory Coast and her one-year-old baby.
Italian authorities said they were investigating the shipwrecks.
Coastguards rescued 57 migrants when the vessels sank on Saturday, about 23 nautical miles (46 km) south-west of Lampedusa.
The tragedy follows June’s Greek boat disaster which left at least 78 dead and hundreds missing.
Police chief Emanuele Ricifari, who is in charge of the investigation, told local media the traffickers would have known that rough seas were forecast.
“Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is an unscrupulous criminal lunatic,” Mr Ricifari said.
In recent days, Italian patrol boats and charity groups have rescued another 2,000 people who have arrived on the island.
But they have said stormy weather and poor quality of the boats continue to complicate the situation.
Mr Ricifari, urging the traffickers to stop, said: “Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let’s hope they stop. It’s sending them to slaughter with this sea.”
NGOs say Italy’s far-right government has made their task more difficult by passing laws that have the effect of forcing rescue ships to use faraway ports.
Charities have warned that this increases their navigation costs and reduces the amount of time ships can patrol the areas of the Mediterranean where such disasters are common.
The Italian Interior ministry said migration figures by sea had doubled this year to 92,000, compared with 42,600 recorded in the same period in 2022.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At least two people have died and more than 30 are missing after two ships carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the UN’s migration agency said on Sunday.
Coastguards rescued 57 migrants when the vessels sank on Saturday, about 23 nautical miles (46 km) south-west of Lampedusa.
Police chief Emanuele Ricifari, who is in charge of the investigation, told local media the traffickers would have known that rough seas were forecast.
In recent days, Italian patrol boats and charity groups have rescued another 2,000 people who have arrived on the island.
NGOs say Italy’s far-right government has made their task more difficult by passing laws that have the effect of forcing rescue ships to use faraway ports.
Charities have warned that this increases their navigation costs and reduces the amount of time ships can patrol the areas of the Mediterranean where such disasters are common.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh no, anyway, back to talking about rich people’s submarine suicide /s
Assholes intentional tying up rescue services. Literally just fill out some paperwork, it is not hard. Is this really the kind of people the EU wants to import? I get that its just cheap labor, but isn’t there a better solution? Like raising wages?
filling out paper work works only for people in “developed” countries when getting a visa.
And why do you think that is?
What dumbarse reason do you think that is?
Because they are just not good candidates for immigration. Because immigration is not a right, only those with a good reason should immigrate?
They just give the illusion of letting migrents in to keep political blocks happy and to give false hope to people seeking a better life outside crappy countries and idealogies.
