Bisola David
At least two migrants have perished and about 20 are still missing after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and Italy according to the German humanitarian organization ResQship.
According to Vanguard, Stefen Seyfert of ResQship said the group’s ship, the Nadir, saved 22 more individuals and transported them to the Italian island of Lampedusa. Their boat sank overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
According to the captain of the Nadir, Ingo Werth, among those rescued were men, women, and children from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Mali.
The crew of the boat also managed to recover the bodies of two men while saving a pregnant woman.
According to Seyfert, the boat had about 40 migrants overall when it departed from Sfax, Tunisia.
“We tried our best to save additional people, but we were unsuccessful,” he continued. He commended the Italian coastguard for their “excellent collaboration.”
Nine of the survivors were women, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. It listed 18 as the number of missing persons.
According to estimates, each migrant paid 3,000 Tunisian dinars ($980) to board the ship.
The migrants had been in the sea for almost two hours when ResQship arrived at the scene of the crash, according to a description of their mission posted earlier on Sunday on Twitter.
They reported that they had found two bodies in addition to saving 22 persons.
The organization continued, “This is a terrible tragedy that could and should have been avoided by a humanitarian approach to migration instead of barb-wiring the European borders.”
Thousands of migrants have just arrived in Lampedusa, which is approximately 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the coast of Tunisia.
This tragedy is the most recent in a string of tragedies that have occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, where hundreds of migrants trying to cross have perished in the water and hundreds more have needed to be rescued from flimsy boats.
They are increasingly being utilized as a launching pad for the dangerous migration of people from Sudan, West Africa, and other countries in search of safety and better life in Europe.
Italy has long complained about the large number of immigrants coming to its borders.
More than 14,000 migrants have entered Italy since the beginning of the year, according to statistics from the interior ministry. This number is much higher than the 5,300 immigrants who entered during the same period in 2022 and the 4,300 immigrants who entered in 2021.
