Migrant boat sinks: 18-year-old girl dies, 45 saved and taken to Lampedusa

She was 18 years old and was born in Gambia: she drowned, during the night, in Maltese waters, after the iron boat she was traveling on sank. The body was identified by her cousins – aged 19 and 18 – who were traveling with her. Two girls who are now in shock.

The boat sank 33 miles southwest of Lampedusa. The coast guard of the island rescued 45 migrants and recovered the girl’s body. The Coast Guard mobilized to save the migrants were the military of the patrol boat Cp274, who then brought them to the dock of Lampedusa. There are no missing persons.-

The prosecutor on duty in Agrigento ordered the autopsy which will be carried out in the next few hours in the mortuary of the cemetery of Cala Pisana in Lampedusa, where the body was taken. The examination will serve to confirm that the eighteen-year-old died from drowning. The 45 survivors, all rescued from the water, are being interviewed by the police of the mobile team of the Agrigento police department.+

Yesterday more than a hundred migrants were rescued by the coast guard and Frontex patrol boats off Lampedusa. Sixty-eight, including 4 women and 10 minors, were on a 10-meter wooden boat that sailed from Kerkenna in Tunisia. The group, made up of Tunisians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Syrians, reported that they left at 9 p.m. yesterday and paid from 2,000 to 7,000 dinars for Tunisians and Moroccans and 3,000 dollars for Syrians and Palestinians. On the second boat, approximately 10 meters long, there were 36 Tunisians, including 5 women and 8 minors. According to them, they set sail yesterday evening from Sidi Mansour in Tunisia, paying 2,000 euros each. There have been a total of 3 landings in Lampedusa, with a total of 134 people. Everyone was taken to the empty hotspot.

In the afternoon, also yesterday (April 3), another sixty migrants landed in Lampedusa, at Cala Madonna, Paradise area. They arrived on land with their boat and were then taken to the reception center in Contrada Imbriacola.