At least 45 migrants died when their wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart off southern Italy before dawn Sunday. Survivors indicated that dozens more could be missing from the boat that had set out from Turkey.
The Italian Coast Guard said at least 80 people were found alive, “some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck.”The precise numbers were hard to establish. A reporter for Italian RAI state TV, standing next to the wreckage on the beach, quoted local authorities as saying 60 bodies had been recovered. With his foot, he indicated a life preserver bearing the word “Smyrna,” a Turkish port also known as Izmir.
The boat collided with the reefs in violently rough seas, whipped up by powerful winds. Some of the wreckage ended up on a stretch of beach along Calabria’s Ionian Sea coast, where splintered pieces of bright blue wood littered the sand like matchsticks. A pair of firefighter water rescuers struggled with wind gusts and waves several meters high crashing onto the beach as they brought a body ashore.One survivor was taken into custody for questioning after survivors indicated he was a trafficker, Rai state TV said.
“It’s an enormous tragedy,” Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI state TV. “In solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery” for the dead, Voce said. “It’s inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the ‘price’ of a ticket paid by them in the false prospect for a safe voyage,” said Meloni, a far-right-wing leader whose governing allies includes the anti-migrant League party.
“Condemning only the smugglers, as the center-right is doing now, is hypocrisy,″ Laura Ferrara, a European Parliament lawmaker from the populist 5-Star Movement, said.“The truth is that the EU today doesn’t offer effective alternatives for those who are forced abandon their country of origin,″ Ferrara said in a statement.
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