Another shipwreck of migrants, still dead in the central Mediterranean. This time it took place off the coast of Tunisia: a boat would have capsized and the 30 people who were on board all ended up in the water. The Tunisian Coast Guard, as the Tap agency reports, “has recovered the bodies of 2 migrants and saved seven others”. No news of the others that the authorities are still looking for. The shipwreck occurred off Chebba, in the governorate of Mahdia, between Sfax and Monastir, and in front of the island of Lampedusa. Dead and survivors are all Tunisians and came from that area. In the same hours, a little further west in the Monastir area, the Tunisian Coast Guard foiled five different attempts to cross to the Italian coasts and the people who were on board the boats, an unspecified number, most of sub-Saharan countries, are were arrested, as a union of seafarers in the Tunisian city has announced.
The Sea Watch 3, a ship belonging to the German NGO of the same name, carried out two rescue interventions: in the first it rescued 66 people who were on a boat in distress, off the coast of Libya; among them, the NGO said, many children and people with walking problems. In the second, 54 migrants who were on a rubber dinghy were recovered. Now the humanitarian ship has 110 people on board.
Disembarkations in these hours are reported both in Sicily and in Sardinia, but also in Spain. During the night, two Tunisian boats arrived in Lampedusa, one with 16 people the other with 15. In the afternoon, two other boats: first 38, among them 3 women and 9 minors, seven of which unaccompanied; then 33, including two unaccompanied minors. Now all 102 arrivals with 4 landings are in the hotspot of the island, which is currently semi-empty.
At dawn, 41 had landed directly on the southern coast of Sicily, in the territory of Siculiana, in the Agrigento area. Migrants have already been spotted on state road 115, some were going towards Agrigento, others in the opposite direction towards Ribera. They were blocked by the police and taken to the tensile structure located in the port of Porto Empedocle.
Four boats, during the morning, also arrived on the coasts of Southern Sardinia, for a total of 49 people, all presumably left from Algeria and now housed in the first reception center of Monastir, north of Cagliari.
Dozens of landings are also reported in Spain, the end of the western Mediterranean route. 203 out of 16 boats arrived in three Balearic islands; another 170 in the South East of the Iberian Peninsula; 62 in Andalusia, in the same area where the search for missing persons is still underway at sea after a shipwreck that took place last Thursday and in which at least 9 people died. In the Alboran sea, a boat with 8 people left from the enclave of Ceuta, in Morocco, was intercepted. Finally, landings also in the Spanish overseas territories, on the Canary Islands: at least one hundred people on Friday evening; among them, 44 were on a boat on which there were also two corpses.
According to the latest data provided by Frontex, the EU agency for external borders, almost all migration routes to Europe from the beginning of the year to September recorded an increase in arrival rates compared to the same period last year, with a + 68% total that is equivalent to 133,900 migrants: on the central Mediterranean route, between Libya and Tunisia on one side and Italy and Malta on the other, there is a + 87%; + 19% on the Western Mediterranean route (Morocco-Spain); + 93% through that of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean; + 148% with the land route of the Balkans; + 1407% with the land route that reaches the north-eastern borders of the EU. The only exception, but with numbers that have been rising since September, is the eastern Mediterranean route (Turkey, Greece, Italy) with -17%.