An 11-year-old girl, wearing a simple life vest and clinging to a pair of tyre tubes, has been rescued off the Italian island of Lampedusa, telling rescuers she had spent three days at sea after a shipwreck that is feared to have killed more than 40 people.
The girl from Sierra Leone said she had been on a metal boat carrying 45 people and which had set off days earlier from the Tunisian city of Sfax. As the rickety vessel made its way through one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes, it encountered a storm, pitting it against metres-high waves and winds of more than 23 knots.
The girl said two other people had initially been in the waters around her, but that the “the sea took them away” two days earlier.
Germany’s Compass Collective, the rescue charity whose vessel found her in the early hours of Wednesday, said the girl had managed to survive storms lasting several days. “We assume that she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned,” it wrote in a statement.
Matthias Wiedenlübbert, the skipper of the Trotamar III rescue boat, described the child’s rescue as a stroke of luck after the crew heard her calls in the darkness. “It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice despite the engine running,” he said in a statement.
After rescuing her, the crew had scrambled to search for other survivors. “But after the storm that lasted for days with over 23 knots and 2.5-meter-high waves, it was hopeless,” said Wiedenlübbert.
While the child had gone days without drinking water or food and was suffering hypothermia, rescuers described her as responsive. She was brought to Lampedusa, where a doctor who treated her told local media that her brother had also been on the same vessel and was now among the dozens of missing who were presumed dead.
On Wednesday the coastguard and police boats were scouring the area for survivors, according to Italian news agency Ansa.
More than 24,300 people have disappeared or died along the route between northern Africa and Italy and Malta in the past decade.
Even so, the NGOs dedicated to assisting asylum seekers have faced increasing obstacles in their work, including lengthy court battles and escalating intimidation and threats.
In the western Mediterranean, emergency services said on Wednesday that at least six people had died trying to reach Spain’s Canary Islands.
News of the child’s rescue off Italy – and the presumed deaths of more than 40 people – prompted campaigners to reiterate their calls for Europe to create safe passages for refugees. “Even in storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean,” said Katja Tempel, from Compass Collective.
Asylum seekers needed to instead be given an alternative means of accessing the system, she added. “Drowning in the Mediterranean is not an option.”
The message was echoed by Nicola Dell’Arciprete, the head of the UN children’s agency Unicef in Italy. “Every life matters. We need safe routes, search and rescue,” she wrote on social media. “Protecting children is a duty.”
