The search for the missing after the tragic shipwreck in Calabria continueswhich took place at dawn on Sunday, in front of the Crotone coast, on the coast of Steccato di Cutro.
The body of a little girl was recovered by divers from the fire brigade in the waters of Steccato di Cutro. After reporting the sighting, the divers immediately intervened, a few hundred meters from the site of the shipwreck on Sunday morning. The policemen, after a few minutes of observation, noticed the body and managed to bring it to shore: the body of the girl, aged about 14, with curly black hair, was then placed on a white sheet and carried away with a through the Port Authority. With this last find, the confirmed victims of the shipwreck rise to 63.
Three other bodies were recovered in the morning during searches for the missing: one was found on the beach a few hundred meters from the disaster site. Another was recovered in the sea, about 400 meters from the shore, by a Coast Guard patrol boat and the third in Le Castella, 3.5 nautical miles from the accident site.
Meanwhile, it was executed a new detention against another of the alleged smugglers of the wrecked boat. At this point, there are three people arrested in all. They are a Turk and two Pakistanis, one of whom is a minor. The three alleged smugglers were tracked down in the asylum seekers center of Isola Capo Rizzuto, where they had been taken after the landing, and taken to prison. The arrests were made by the Carabinieri, the Guardia di Finanza and the Flying Squad in execution of a decree issued by the Crotone Public Prosecutor’s Office.
About 80 survivors but si fear over 100 migrants died in the shipwreck. There is still no reliable number of people who were on board the gulet which left Turkey 4 days ago. According to some survivors they would have been around 180. For others many more, at least 250. Forty-six bodies were found on the spot, three others on the beach of Botricello, in the Catanzaro area. Eight more in “Le Castella” of Isola Capo Rizzuto and one in Crotone.
Among the victims there are also twins of a few years and a baby of a few months, less than a year old. The twins’ bodies were recovered from the sea, while the baby’s was found on the beach. In the shipwreck, according to some estimates, about twenty children of various ages would have died.
A rescuer: ‘I found the bodies of about fifteen children’
Searches at sea for the missing persons continued throughout the night. The searches are conducted by the Port Authority of Crotone with the help of units of the aeronautical department of the Guardia di Finanza and the fire brigade. The divers of the Coast Guard and the helicopter of the Port Authority are in action.
Piantedosi: “Despair does not justify risky travel”
“Despair can never justify travel conditions that endanger the lives of one’s children,” said the interior minister Matteo Piantedosi, responding to journalists after the massacre of migrants in Calabria. “We are working on it. It is an international problem”, added the minister, responding on how smugglers can be fought. And Europe? “I’m going to France for this”, explained Piantedosi, who is committed to a bilateral agreement with his French counterpart.
With the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, “we have shared very interesting, very important joint work plans and projects. Even to the point of imagining – and it is a proposal that we believe we will be able to implement by the end of March – that we can also carry out joint missions, my French colleague Darmanin and I, in countries that are of fundamental importance such as Tunisia and Libya”: thus the interior minister responding to reporters at the Italian embassy in Paris after meeting with his French counterpart . “This is precisely to also give the visibility of an action and therefore of common positions: we as Italy and France but in the case sharing this planning also with other important components in the European context”.
“I believe that tragedies like these require great respect for the victims – said the Minister of the Interior commenting from Paris on the controversies that followed the terrible shipwreck of the migrants on the Calabrian coast -, an adequate posture and verbal choices on the part of anyone, from especially those who have government positions starting from myself. But I find it shameful that there is such a high level of exploitation of such great tragedies to question what are then principles that could be discussed freely “.
Shipwreck in the Crotone area, Piantedosi: ‘In these conditions we must not leave’
Prosecutor, the investigation is into the shipwreck, not the rescue
“We are also looking at reconstructing the rescue chain but there are no investigations into this. We are reconstructing all the steps from the sighting onwards to reconstruct what was done and compare it with what had to be done which seems to have been done. For sure the sea conditions were terrible”. The public prosecutor of Crotone told ANSA Giuseppe Capoccia on the investigation into the shipwreck. “Here – he added – there is a lack of men and means of the police forces. The government should understand that it would be necessary to set up the structures in a different way. In the summer we have 3 landings a week”.
THE POINT OF THE ANSA REPORTER
THE RUNNING OF THE SURVIVORS – The approximately 60 surviving migrants brought to the reception center of Isola Capo Rizzuto cry without speaking, wrapped in terrible and silent pain. They have taken off their wet clothes and are wrapped up in blankets, reunited, staring into space, united by pain and despair. A woman, who has a broken nose, cries out in despair the name of her son who she can’t find anymore than her.
Shipwreck of migrants in the Crotone area, searches continue
WHERE THE MIGRANTS CAME FROM – The migrants came from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria. It was one of the many journeys of hope that follows the Turkish route, the one most frequented by migrants from countries in the area. They were on a gulet that could not withstand the force of the sea, particularly rough, and split a few meters from the coast.
ANSA agency
Rescuers were unable to reach him due to rough seas (ANSA)
THE ACCUSATION OF NGOs
ANSA agency
MSF: “Desolate lack of relief capacity”. Save the children: “Politics thinks of walls” (ANSA)
MATTARELLA’S APPEAL – The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella in expressing the “sorrow” for the shipwreck off the coast of Crotone, calls for “a strong commitment from the international community to remove the causes underlying the flows of migrants; wars, persecutions, terrorism, poverty, territories rendered inhospitable to climate change”. It is equally essential – he adds – that the EU finally takes on concrete responsibility for governing the migratory phenomenon in order to rescue it from human traffickers, directly engaging itself in migratory policies.
ANSA agency
Meloni: ‘Don’t speculate on the dead’. Piantedosi: “Block departures” (ANSA)