Forty-one migrants have died after a small boat , which set sail from Sfax in Tunisia, capsized and sank while sailing in the Strait of Sicily .
To tell what was yet another tragedy are the four survivors, three men and a woman, who were rescued by the Rimona motorboat which, this morning, transferred them to the Coast Guard patrol boat CP327.
The 4 castaways , originally from the Ivory Coast and Guinea Konakry, are currently in the Lampedusa hotspot and are in great pain and in shock . They told the Coast Guard soldiers that 45 of them left Sfax, including 3 children , at 10 on Thursday 3 August. After about 6 hours of sailing, the 7m metal punt capsized due to a large wave. All the migrants - according to the survivors - ended up in the sea.
Only 15 had a life jacket, but drowned anyway.
The dead , according to the testimonies of the three men and the woman, would therefore be 41, including 3 children . Neither the vessel, flying the Maltese flag, the bulk carrier "Rimona" that saved them, nor the Coast Guard patrol boats sighted any bodies. And this is because the four were rescued yesterday, several days after the shipwreck and at a distance from where the tragedy took place.
RESCUE - The survivors say they remained in the water for several hours , at least until they managed to get close and get on an iron boat , without an engine, perhaps abandoned after a transfer of migrants. On that cart they remained adrift, carried by the current for about 4 days . Yesterday a Frontex plane spotted and located them and triggered the rescue operations. The Italian Port Authority activated the Libyan Coast Guard , because the vessel with the 4 survivors had meanwhile ended up off the coast of Libya, but no one intervened . Then they were rescued by the bulk carrier "Rimona" from where they were transferred to the CP327 patrol boat of the Italian Coast Guard.
THE INQUIRY – In the meantime, the acting chief prosecutor of Agrigento, Salvatore Vella, has opened an investigation file against unknown persons.
In the next few hours, the survivors will be heard, together with the cultural mediators and interpreters, by the policemen of the Mobile Squad of the Agrigento Police Headquarters who will try to reconstruct what actually happened and to clarify some details.
(Unioneonline/vl)