There is an unreal and painful silence inside the PalaMilone of Crotone. The stands, once crowded with soccer and volleyball fans, are deserted. On the parquet, in four rows, 64 coffins are arranged. One, the 65th, will be added a little later. Five coffins are white, they house the little bodies of children torn by the fury of the waves from their parents’ hands. There are 14 minors. For some, still not recognized, there is no name and surname on the case, but only the initials affixed by the coroner, such as “KR46M0”. The family members, after the recognition of their loved ones, were accompanied to another place, where they could vent their pain away from the prying eyes of the cameras.
The funeral home will be open on Wednesday morning to the people of Crotone, who continue to leave messages, flowers, wreaths and other signs of affection outside. Reporters were allowed to shoot a few images and take a few photos, in turns of two people at a time. And as we walk among the rows of coffins, the silence is increasingly deafening and leaves us dismayed.
We tiptoe out, sad at heart, while other cars with foreign, Swiss, German license plates arrive outside, with other men and women with swollen eyes, who learned of the shipwreck from websites and newspapers and traveled thousands km hoping to find a brother, a sister, a cousin still alive.
Like Aladdin, a young Afghan who has lived in Germany for 8 years and drove 25 hours “without breaks” to get here and learn news that broke his heart. He now he cries, sitting on a low wall. «My uncle Wahid called me at 3.45 on Sunday morning, telling me they were arriving in Crotone – he says, with teary eyes -. Six of them had paid 30,000 euros to the smugglers, all their life’s savings. My uncle told me that everyone was fine: he, his wife Monica, and the four children».
And instead, shortly after, the shipwreck: «I lost my aunt and three little cousins, aged 12, 8 and 5. Their faces I struggled to recognize them. The smallest is missing. Only a 14-year-old cousin and uncle Wahid remained alive. A broken family», sobs Aladdin.
Then he adds: “You can’t die like this, just for having sought a better existence. And it is unacceptable that so many people die because help did not arrive in time. If they had arrived an hour earlier today they would all be alive.’
Through the infoline activated by the Police ([email protected], tel. +39.0962.6636509), requests for information on the victims and survivors of the shipwreck are arriving at the Crotone police station from all over Europe. An Afghan lady living in Germany, fearing that a 15-year-old cousin was on the boat and not knowing how to contact the authorities, contacted the Ansa editorial staff in Berlin, sending a photo of the boy and a description of him, shot by the agency to the authorities.
As evening approaches, citizens continue to arrive to leave a flower or say a prayer, like a group of women and girls reciting a rosary together for the dead. No one in the city, from the mayor Vincenzo Voce to the last Crotonese, has remained insensitive to the drama. «Pain and tears for you, one cannot die like this», reads a message left together with the flowers by a delegation from the Crotone football team, led by coach Lamberto Zauli and captain Vladimir Golemic: «We are all shocked to have witnessed – helplessly – the umpteenth tragedy, which took place right in front of in our eyes, in which many children have also lost their lives – say the rossoblù players -. We must not linger any longer and immediately start reflecting on what each of us, especially those who enjoy important visibility, can do to prevent all of this from happening again”.