The Italian coastguard rescued seven Syrian migrants on Wednesday, September 4, from a boat adrift off the island of Lampedusa. More than 3,000 people had disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2023.
Amid general indifference, migratory tragedies are piling up at Europe’s borders. Twelve exiles died on Tuesday in the Channel while trying to reach the United Kingdom. A new shipwreck took place on Wednesday, September 4, this time in the Mediterranean, near the Italian island of Lampedusa, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Italian coastguard announced.
At least twenty people are missing.The seven survivors, welcomed by our team in Lampedusa, are in critical condition. Many of them are said to have lost loved ones“in the catastrophe, said Chiara Cardoletti of the UNHCR
The Italian coastguard, for its part, reported 21 missing persons. They said they had rescued in the morning, less than twenty kilometres from Lampedusa, “a boat adrift, half submerged in water and about to sink, with seven migrants on board, all men of Syrian nationality». «The rescued migrants said they set off on September 1 from Libya with 28 people on board, including three minors, of whom 21 are believed to have fallen into the water due to bad weather conditions.“, they said in a statement. They also claim to be continuing the search for the missing persons, including with the help of an aircraft.
In 2023, more than 3,000 migrants were reported missing after attempting to cross the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). According to figures from the Italian Interior Ministry, arrivals by sea have dropped significantly since the beginning of the year: 43,061 people arrived in Italy between January 1 and September 4, compared to 115,177 in the same period in 2023.
