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Migrants swim next to their overturned wooden boat during a rescue operation by Spanish NGO Open Arms south of the Italian Lampedusa island in the Mediterranean Sea on August 11, 2022. Photo: AP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least 70 migrants are missing and feared dead after two ships capsized off the coast of Italy several days ago, the Italian Red Cross told Rudaw on Wednesday, noting that there was an explosion onboard one of the vessels.
“We remain astonished by what happened in Lampedusa and Roccella Ionica, in two lands that are a place of welcome for us and where, once again, unfortunately the journey of two boats was unable to end, due to circumstances that need to be ascertained,” Italian Red Cross President Rosario Valastro told Rudaw.
Two shipwrecks off the coast of Italy have scores of migrants dead with concerns mounting over the fates of those missing. Most of the passengers were Kurds from the Kurdistan Region and Iran’s western Kurdish areas, as well as people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Syria.
“The first testimonies and estimates collected by the volunteers involved in supporting the migrants speak of a total of over 70 people missing and dead at sea,” Valastro said.
On late Sunday, the Italian coastguard reported that authorities were alerted to the presence of a “half-sunken” boat around 120 nautical miles off the coast of Italy by a French pleasure boat. The French vessel transferred 12 surviving migrants, one of whom died after disembarking. The survivors are receiving treatment at a medical facility in the town of Roccella Ionica in southern Italy.
“Just 11 survivors arrived in Rocella after what, from an initial estimate, appears to have been an explosion on board the vessel,” the humanitarian organization said, expressing regret about the fate of the migrants who drowned at sea.
In a separate incident, the bodies of 10 migrants were found off the Italian island of Lampedusa after their wooden boat capsized. German aid group RESQSHIP said that at least 61 people were on board the sunken boat, adding that their crew was able to evacuate 51 of them, two of whom were unconscious.
Among the families were four Kurdish families - two from Erbil province and two from Sulaimani province’s Raparin administration - numbering at least 19 people. Eight members of a family from Erbil have died in the waters, a relative of theirs told Rudaw on Tuesday, saying he received the news from another relative who was onboard the vessel but was rescued.
Tens of thousands of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region take on perilous routes out of the country towards Europe on a yearly basis in hopes of escaping the endless crises in the country, including the lack of employment, political instability, and corruption.
Around 20,000 people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region migrated out of the country in 2023, with at least nine of them losing their lives on the dangerous and illegal smuggling routes, according to the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugees and Displaced Affairs.
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