Oil tanker saves 139 migrants, but three fall during transfer and the sea swallows their lives. Survivors disembark in Lampedusa.

Last Updated: March 26, 2024

Petroliera salva 139 migranti, ma tre cadono durante il trasbordo e il mare inghiotte le loro vite. I superstiti sbarcati a Lampedusa

Three migrants – a Syrian, a Bengali, and an Ethiopian – fell into the sea, in international waters, during the transfer from the 12-meter boat to the oil tanker ship Vault, and are missing. The crew of the cargo ship rescued a cart with 139 migrants on board, including a woman, who said they had departed from Sabratha in Libya. During the rescue operations, which took place overnight, three people fell into the water and it was not possible to recover them.

This is the third episode, and the missing persons now total 5 (including a 15-month-old girl from Cameroon and a 15-year-old from Guinea), within 3 days. The 139 migrants were then transferred to the Coast Guard motorboat Cp319, which landed them at the Favarolo pier in Lampedusa. The group consists of people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, Mali, Guinea, Ethiopia, and Eritrea who have already been taken to the Imbriacola hotspot where the total number of arrivals is now 717.

Yesterday (March 24) at the request of the prefecture of Agrigento, a total of 680 migrants were transferred by two ferries to Porto Empedocle.

The 139 companions of the three missing persons will now be questioned by the mobile police officers, who are present at the hotspot 365 days a year, to try to reconstruct how the three ended up in the sea during the transfer, as well as the details of the journey. The 12-meter boat, which departed from Sabratha in Libya at 2 a.m. on Saturday, was left adrift. Many of the 139 have already reported paying between 3,000 and 7,000 dollars to embark on the vessel.