Only one body recovered, that of a young woman, but 64 missing. The cost in human lives of another shipwreck in the Ionian Sea on the eastern Mediterranean route towards Italy, of a boat leaving from Turkey, would be very high.
This was told by the eleven surviving migrants rescued by the Coast Guard and who landed this morning in the Calabrian port of Roccella Jonica, and were then welcomed into the Red Cross tensile structure. Among them also a pregnant woman.
According to the Radio Radicale journalist Sergio Scandura who monitors the tracks in the sea and in the sky, the shipwreck occurred in Italian Sar waters more than 100 miles from Roccella Ionica.
On board the shipwrecked vessel were mainly Afghans, Iranians and Kurds.
At the moment one body has been recovered while the eleven shell-shocked survivors saved by a Coast Guard patrol boat have been disembarked in Roccella.
Since last night the Coast Guard has been searching for the missing. The report of the sinking boat came from some French yachtsmen about 120 miles from the Calabrian coast, on the border between Italian and Greek Sar waters.
It was the boaters who recovered the 12 survivors of the shipwreck. Having received the “mayday” with the now half-sunken migrant boat, the operations room in Rome first diverted two nearby merchant ships to the site to await the arrival of two patrol boats from the Calabrian Coast Guard while an ATR flew over the area from above. The survivors were first taken aboard one of the two merchant ships and then transferred to the Coast Guard patrol boat which took them ashore. The woman died immediately after landing.
