The girl fell into the water and her body was not recovered. It is not the first time that motor boats have been stolen in the Sicilian channel
A girl aged 4 fell into the sea and drowned because during the navigation of the small boat, on which she was together with 34 other people, the crew of a Tunisian fishing boat attempted to steal the boat’s engine, departed from Sfax. The attempted theft caused her little girl to fall into the water, whose body was not recovered. The episode happened in the Italian Sar area. The boat was rescued by our Coast Guard and the Guardia di Finanza.
It is not the first time that the engines of small boats, loaded with migrants, have been stolen in the Sicilian channel. Already on March 26, a 7-meter vessel carrying 42 people was found adrift and without an engine. According to the migrants, a Tunisian fishing boat had boarded them and some people, probably part of the crew, had stolen the engine. It is not excluded that such episodes may also have occurred in the past.
The crossings continue, above all from Tunisia, and also the shipwrecks. Last night a 7-metre small boat sank in the Italian Sar area. Forty-six migrants, including seven minors and 13 women, were rescued by the Coast Guard soldiers. But there would also be three missing, including the mother of a newborn: the latter survived. The castaways, originally from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Gambia, were landed at the Favarolo pier in Lampedusa. They reported that they left Sfax, Tunisia, at 9 pm last Friday and paid 2,000 dinars for the crossing.
The continuous landings lead to the overcrowding of the hotspots, such as the one in the Imbriacola district where there were 2,242 guests compared to just under 400 places available. The 299 rescued migrants who were aboard six different boats (including that of the 46 shipwrecked) were brought here. During the night and until dawn in Lampedusa on Friday there were 12 landings with a total of 611 people. On the small boats docked during the night there were groups of 48 people (3 women and 2 minors), 46 (13 women and 7 minors) of which three are missing, 42 (10 women and 8 minors), 45 (6 women and 2 minors), 36 (9 women and 3 minors) and 82 (8 women).
The first five boats left from Sfax in Tunisia, while the last one from Sabratah in Libya. The hotspot that hosts them remains overcrowded despite the fact that in recent days, with ferries, ships and military aircraft, a thousand people have been transferred every day.