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Italy probes a migrant boat disaster that left 41 feared dead

Chief Prosecutor Salvatore Vella, based in Agrigento, who is investigating the capsizing that left 41 migrants feared dead in the Mediterranean Sea on Aug 4, denounced Tunisia-based smugglers who launch boats so badly built that they quickly take on water, overturn or break apart. Four young migrants who were rescued by the 'Rimona', told doctors and police on Lampedusa that they survived by clinging to air tubes for hours. They and a few other survivors spotted an empty boat and struggled to reach it. But only the four of them made it to the boat and climbed aboard, only to find the iron-hulled, open-topped vessel had no engine. The migrants then survived for about four days on four bottles of drinking water and a half-package of crackers they found in the boat. 41 fellow passengers, including three children, set out with them from the port of Sfax, on Aug. 3. Waves as high as four meters swamped the smugglers' boats the next day. The boat the survivors set off in is the type hastily soldered together with pieces of iron by smugglers in Tunisia to keep up with demands by migrants desperate to make the risky journey toward Italy’s shores. The fate of who those who might have been on board the empty vessel is not known. Report with photo: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italy-investigates-migrant-boat-disaster-41-feared-dead-102164429

Four migrants rescued, 41 dead in shipwreck in the Strait of Sicily

On Aug 8, 2023, the 'Rimona', en ropute from Tarragona to Chioggia, rescued four migrants after a small boat, which set sail from Sfax in Tunisia, capsized and sank while sailing in the Strait of Sicily. Among the four survivors were three men and a woman from the Ivory Coast and Guinea Konakry, who were transferred onto the Coast Guard patrol boat 'CP 327' in the morning of Aug 9, and landed in Lampedusa.The four survivors told the Coast Guard soldiers that on the whole 45 migrants left Sfax, including three children, on Aug 3 at 10 a.m. After about six hours of navigation, the 7-metre metal punt capsized due to a large wave. All the migrants, among them three children, ended up in the sea. Only 15 had a life jacket, but drowned anyway. Neither the bulk carrier nor the Coast Guard patrol boats sighted any bodies.