ROME–At least 59 people died when a wooden sailing boat carrying migrants to Europe crashed against rocks near the southern Italian coast early on Sunday, authorities said.
The vessel, which sailed from Turkey and was carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran, and several other countries, sank in rough seas before dawn near Steccato di Cutro, a seaside resort on the eastern coast of Calabria.
Manuela Curra, a provincial government official, told Reuters that 81 people had survived the shipwreck. Twenty of them were hospitalized, including one person in intensive care.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, who travelled to the scene, said 20–30 people might still be missing, amid reports from survivors that the boat had been carrying between 150 to 200 migrants.
The vessel set sail from the western Turkish port of Izmir about four days ago and was spotted about 74 kilometers (46 miles) off the Italian coast late on Saturday by a plane operated by European Union border agency Frontex, Italian police said.
Patrol boats were sent to intercept it, but severe weather forced them to return to port, police said, adding that authorities then mobilized search units along the coastline.
Wreckage from the wooden gulet, a Turkish sailing boat, was strewn across a large stretch of coast.
‘False Prospect’ of Safety
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed deep sorrow for the deaths, and blamed human traffickers who profit while offering migrants “the false prospect of a safe journey.”“The government is committed to preventing departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies, and will continue to do so, first of all by calling for maximum cooperation from the countries of departure and of origin,” she said.
Meloni’s administration has said migrant rescue charities are encouraging migrants to make the dangerous sea journey to Italy, and sometimes work in partnership with traffickers.
Charities strongly reject both accusations.
“Stopping, blocking, and hindering the work of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) will have only one effect: the death of vulnerable people left without help,” Spanish migrant rescue charity Open Arms posted on Twitter in reaction to Sunday’s shipwreck.
However, the coast off Calabria has not been patrolled by NGO ships, which operate in the waters south of Sicily. That suggests they would have been unlikely to intercept the shipwrecked migrants regardless of Meloni’s crackdown.
The head of the Italian Catholic Church, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, called for the resumption of an EU search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean, as part of a “structural, shared, and humanitarian response” to the migration crisis.
A spokesman for the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM), in the same vein, appealed on Twitter for the strengthening of rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
