Each had been rickety iron boats believed to have set off from Sfax in Tunisia on Thursday. Cultural mediators with the IOM believed there have been “not less than 30 individuals lacking” after chatting with the survivors, press officer Flavio Di Giacomo informed AFP. An investigation into the shipwrecks has been opened in Agrigento, on the close by Italian island of Sicily.
Agrigento’s chief of police Emanuele Ricifari stated the traffickers would have recognized tough seas had been forecast. “Whoever allowed them, or pressured them, to go away with this sea is an unscrupulous legal lunatic,” he informed Italian media. “Tough seas are forecast for the subsequent few days. Let’s hope they cease.
It is sending them to slaughter with this sea,” he stated. Because the stormy climate continued, firebrigade and alpine rescue groups had been making ready yesterday to tug to security some 20 migrants trapped on a rocky a part of Lampedusa’s shoreline. The migrants have been there since late Friday, after their boat was tossed onto the rocks by sturdy winds. They’ve been supplied with meals, water, garments and emergency thermal blankets by the Pink Cross, however the coastguard has been unable to rescue them by sea as a result of excessive waves.
