11.40pm. There are 10 bodies extracted, without much difficulty, from a trap in the hold of the 8-metre vessel, which left Libya, on which they were travelling. They are all men, aged 18 to 30, with facial features attributable to Bangladesh or Pakistan. At the pier of the port of Lampedusa, where the operation took place, even the mayor of Pelagie, Filippo Mannino, who continued to repeat: “It’s a torment, it’s a torment!”.
Meanwhile, the V824 patrol boat of the financial police has arrived at the Favarolo pier with 55 migrants on board, including 10 women and 14 minors. Among the little ones there is also a one-month-old baby. The group is made up of Gambians, Guineans, Nigerians, Ghanaians and Senegalese and reported that they left from Sfax in Tunisia. This is the sixth landing of the day.
9.55pm. The NGO Nadir ship that is towing the boat from where 54 migrants were rescued and where, in the hold, there are 10 or 11 corpses will arrive at midnight at the port of Lampedusa. A helicopter, with operators and officials from the NBCR fire brigade group, is about to arrive on the largest of the Pelagie islands where a team of five people has already been organized to proceed with the extraction of the bodies found inside a hatch in the hold of the approximately 8 meter vessel that set sail from Zawia in Libya. Recovery will not be easy, part of the wreck will probably have to be cut away.
After the extraction, the body inspection will be carried out tomorrow morning, ordered by the prosecutor on duty. As soon as the deputy prosecutor gives the go-ahead for the burial and the Municipality issues the death certificates and burial authorizations, the prefecture of Agrigento will probably arrange for the transfer by tomorrow evening’s ferry.
The prefecture of Agrigento, once again, has already managed to find the necessary spaces for the burials: 3 corpses will be buried in Centuripe, the same number in Villarosa, in the Ennese area; 1 in Bompensiere, 2 in Niscemi, in the Nisseno area and one in Castrofilippo.
According to what emerges at the moment, among the 53 migrants taken to the hotspot (one, due to serious burns, was transferred by air ambulance to the intensive care unit of the Civic hospital in Palermo) there are no family members of the victims who remained imprisoned in the hatch of the hold .
Migrants: the 5-month-old baby girl who died from malnutrition traveled to Porto Empedocle and will be buried in Favara
2pm. There are 54 surviving migrants, including a woman and a minor, who were disembarked from the coast guard patrol boat Cp306 at the Favarolo pier. On their own boat, which set sail from Zawia in Libya, about ten bodies were found. According to the survivors, who are being interviewed in these minutes by the coast guard and the policemen of the flying squad, the dead should be 11. The group is made up of people originally from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Syria, who paid around 3,500 dollars to get traveling on an 8 meter wooden boat. Two injured people have already been transported to the clinic.
The bodies remained on board the sea cart being towed by the NGO ship Nadir which will arrive at the port in the evening. It is estimated that it should take about 10 hours before arriving on the largest of the Pelagie islands.
1pm. The 10 bodies found by the crew of the NGO ship Nadir, which rescued a small boat full of migrants in Sar Maltese waters, will be transported to Lampedusa. The coast guard on duty on the largest of the Pelagie islands has transhipped the approximately forty migrants rescued from the Nadir and is now towing the “sea cart” with the 10 corpses on board which will arrive on the largest of the Pelagie islands in the evening.
From Libya to Lampedusa: 173 migrants disembarked, 308 guests of the hotspot
There were around 51 migrants traveling on a wooden boat. When the crew of the Nadir arrived to provide assistance, they found that for 10 of them it was, unfortunately, too late. According to what the NGO ResQship said, two of the people rescued were unconscious and had to be freed with an axe. The 10 dead were on the lower deck of the boat which was flooded.
The Ministry of the Interior ordered the transfer of the survivors and bodies to Lampedusa.
Just last June 8, the coast guard transshipped another 11 bodies recovered in Libyan SAR waters from the NGO ship Geo Barents, owned by Doctors Without Borders.
