Rescue worker: Dozens of people rescued from Italian shipwreck

The captain of a rescue ship described the moment crews used axes and hammers to free migrants trapped in the hold of a sinking wooden boat off the coast of Italy.

Ingo Veert, the captain of the RESQSHIP relief vessel, told the BBC’s Today program that his crew initially rescued 50 migrants trapped on the deck of a distressed boat near the island of Lampedusa before breaking the boat and rescuing two people trapped below deck. .

He said 10 other men were also found dead below the deck of the ship.

Aid workers said 64 people were still missing at sea after another ship sank near Italy’s Calabria region.

The second shipwreck was located about 125 miles off the Italian coast. One of the 12 survivors died after disembarking, the Coast Guard said.

Survivors of the shipwreck near Lampedusa were handed over to the Italian coast guard on Monday morning and taken to shore, while the dead were escorted to the island, according to RESQSHIP.

The boat was carrying migrants from Libya and Türkiye, the UN agency said. The Ansa news agency reported that they paid around $3,500 (£2,759) per person for the voyage.

Mr Birt, captain of the Nadir rescue boat, said the first reports of a “completely overloaded migrant boat” came over the radio at about 1:30 local time.

He said that when the rescue boat reached the vessel around 03:00, “the water was coming in and it was almost sinking and people were completely nervous.”

The captain said crew members gave the survivors life jackets and used axes and hammers to free the two men from the wreck. Rescue workers found one survivor with a body temperature of 32 degrees Celsius and “barely breathing.”

“He was trapped with the rest of the group so we opened the deck and made a big hole to get him out. [dead] People…he was still alive,” Mr Veert told the BBC.

“They are all very young men, aged between 18 and 25,” he added.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in a joint statement that the ship departed Libya and was carrying migrants from Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

In a separate disaster near Calabria, aid groups said many children were among those missing.

Shakilla Mohammadi of Doctors Without Borders said 66 people were missing from survivors, including at least 26 children as young as a few months old.

“The entire family from Afghanistan is believed to have died. They arrived from Turkey eight days ago and had been submerged in the water for three to four days. They said they had no life jackets and some boats did not even stop to help them,” she said. said. name.

The Mediterranean Sea is known to be the deadliest migration route in the world.

More than 23,500 migrants have died or gone missing in the country’s waters since 2014, according to UN data.