2023-06-23 22:34:48
A new shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea. A migrant boat was shipwrecked on Thursday June 22 off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, killing around 40 people, the spokeswoman for the High Commissioner for Refugees (AFP) told Agence France-Presse (AFP). UNHCR) of the United Nations (UN) in Italy, Chiara Cardoletti.
Among the victims is at least one minor and seven women, she wrote in a tweet, the content of which she confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone. The iron boat, which left Sfax in Tunisia, was carrying forty-six migrants from sub-Saharan Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina-Faso and Cameroon), a spokesman for the International Organization for Migrations (OMI), Flavio Di Giacomo.
Faced with bad weather conditions (strong wind and big waves), the boat capsized. Some survivors were taken to Lampedusa and others brought back to Tunisia, according to Flavio Di Giacomo. “The survivors are all adult men,” he added.
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“It is unacceptable to continue counting the dead”
“Since November, we have noticed more arrivals of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa than Tunisians” by the Tunisian road, “safer than the Libyan road because it is shorter”, he observed. A phenomenon due, according to him “to the strong discrimination that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa suffer in Tunisia, which they therefore flee”.
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The spokesman also underlined the fragility of iron boats, badly welded, arriving from Tunisia and sinking at the first damage. “We are therefore not aware of certain shipwrecks”he lamented, calling for “Patrols of European ships to monitor the Tunisian route as well as the Libyan route, otherwise we will witness a disaster this summer”. An opinion shared by the UNHCR spokeswoman in Italy, who believes that “a rescue mechanism at sea coordinated and shared between States is now also a matter of conscience”.
“It is unacceptable to continue counting the dead at the gates of Europe”denounced for her part Chiara Cardoletti, in reference to the deadly shipwrecks of migrant boats that have already occurred in Italy, Greece and Spain since the beginning of the year.
Located about 145 kilometers from the Tunisian coast, Lampedusa is one of the main entry points for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Last year, more than 46,000 people landed there, out of a total of 105,000 arrivals in Italy, according to the UNHCR.
This sinking comes almost ten days after that of another migrant boat this time in the Ionian Sea, along the Greek coast, where a ship carrying 750 people, for lack of help, sank, causing the death of sixty -ten people.
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