The boat, which left Turkey, broke in two yesterday morning due to rough seas a few meters from the shore of the “Steccato” di Cutro coast, in Crotone. About 80 people were rescued, but nearly 100 dead in total are feared. Many children were also among the victims, the body of a 14-year-old was recovered today. There are three alleged smugglers arrested
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At least 63 dead and dozens missing. It is the still partial balance of the umpteenth sea tragedy that took place yesterday on the Calabrian coast, with the dramatic epilogue on a stretch of beach in the Steccato di Cutro hamlet, in the Crotone area. A boat with numerous migrants on board broke apart about a hundred meters from the shore causing a massacre: 64 are dead, an indefinable number of victims still to be recovered, it is believed at least 30-40 (THE MIGRANT SPECIAL – THE NUMBERS OF LANDINGS IN 2023). And among them many children: 14 are those recovered including twins of a few years and a baby of a few months. The underage victims ranged in age from 14 years to eight months. Only 82 survived. For 22 of them, transport to hospital was necessary and one is in a reserved prognosis in intensive care. Meanwhile, two other people were allegedly arrested, according to indiscretions collected in judicial circles, accused of being the smugglers of the boat. The two people who are said to be in custody are added to the one already blocked, with the same accusation, yesterday.
Recovered the body of a little girl
While the searches continue, divers from the fire brigade today recovered the body of a little girl from the waters. After a report of the sighting, the divers immediately intervened, a few hundred meters from the site of the shipwreck on Sunday morning. The police, after a few minutes of observation, noticed her body and managed to bring it to shore. The body of the girl, aged about 14, with curly black hair, was then laid on a white sheet and transported away with a vehicle from the Port Authority.
The Prosecutor: “The investigation is on the shipwreck not on the rescue”
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Migrants, shipwreck in Crotone. The reactions from Mattarella to Msf
“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”, he told theAnsa the prosecutor of the Republic of Crotone, Giuseppe Capoccia, regarding 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 investigations
“Now – explained Capoccia – we are listening to the survivors and then there is the complete identification phase. Then we will see other aspects and we will also try to reconstruct the rescue chain. This morning I spoke with the general commander of the Port Authorities and certainly who he was carrying the boat he was not a fool. They probably wanted to beach themselves since we were traveling on a boat without a centreboard. Instead they ended up on a shoal that is known to the sailors of the area. As they stopped, the boat could no longer withstand the blows inflicted by the waves and it literally fell apart, in the sense that the planking didn’t hold up”. “We are also reconstructing – added the magistrate – all the steps, from the sighting onwards. Among other things, there is also an oddity: a distress call has never been sent from the boat. The international call to the Finance Police? It was a strange triangulation, but they didn’t ask for help from the boat as they always do when they get close to the coast.” Capoccia then highlighted that even with larger vessels, with those sea conditions, a possible boarding would have been extremely risky, recalling what happened in the Otranto canal where a military unit touched a boat of migrants causing it to sink. The prosecutor of Crotone then confirmed that the crimes hypothesized in the investigation are three: manslaughter, culpable shipwreck and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
The rescues
“When we arrived at the site of the shipwreck – said Laura De Paoli, doctor of the Cisom Cavalieri di Malta Foundation – we saw dozens of corpses floating everywhere. At one point we saw two men holding up a child. We managed to “Recover them, they were the boy’s brother and uncle who, however, was lifeless. We tried to revive him, but his lungs were full of water and he couldn’t make it. We later learned that he was just 7 years old”. The survivors wandered around the beach, disoriented and terrified, screaming in search of a relative, a friend, a son they could not find. Rescuers have no certain information on how many people were on board at departure. In this sense, contradictory numbers emerge from the stories of the survivors. Some speak of 180 people, others indicate a much higher number. As the hours went by, the belief that there were around 180 migrants gained ground. This means that at least forty people are missing, and the hopes of finding them alive, at this point, are practically nil.
What happened
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Shipwreck in Crotone, Red Cross on Sky TG24: “On board in 150-200”
The boat, which left four days earlier from Izmir, Turkey, with a load of Iraqi, Iranian, Afghan and Syrian citizens, was identified on Saturday evening by a Frontex service plane. Two units of the Guardia di Finanza set sail from the port of Crotone, but the bad conditions – with sea force 3-4 – forced the crews to return. Then yesterday, around 4, an international phone call, probably coming from the same boat, tried to give the alarm to the Operations Room of the Aeronaval Group of the Guardia di Finanza in Vibo Valentia. However, the telephone operator did not provide any useful information due to his broken English, but the operators nevertheless understood that something serious could have happened and raised the alarm. When they arrived at the scene, the rescuers were faced with a scenario of death, with the tragedy that had already taken place. The hypothesis considered most probable is that the wooden boat crashed against a submerged rock about a hundred meters from the shore, remaining at the mercy of the waves that broke it like a twig causing its human cargo to pour into the sea. Few on board knew how to swim and they didn’t make it with the current and the force of the sea. Mostly men survived. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation to reconstruct the dynamics of the tragedy, hypothesizing the crimes of culpable homicide and disaster and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
Piantedosi: in these conditions they must not leave
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Migrant shipwreck in Crotone, the mayor of Cutro: “Huge tragedy”
Yesterday evening the words of Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi arrived: “The only thing that must be said and affirmed is: they must not leave. There can be no alternatives. We send this message to the world: in these conditions we must not leave. Faced with tragedies of this type, I don’t think it can be argued that in the first place there is the right or the duty to leave and leave in this way. I would not leave if I was desperate because I was brought up with the responsibility of not asking myself what I should ask the place where I live but what I can do for the country where I live to redeem it”. According to the minister, the number of missing would be slightly lower: “There should be between 20 and 30 people missing”.