Nearly 60 people are dead and dozens are missing after a boat filled with migrants broke apart just off the coast of Italy.
ROME — A wooden boat crowded with migrants smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart before dawn Sunday off the Italian coast, authorities said. Rescuers recovered nearly 60 bodies, and dozens more people were missing in the rough waters.
Standing next to the wreckage on the beach, a reporter for Italian RAI state TV noted a life preserver bearing the word “Smyrna,” a Turkish port also known as Izmir. Earlier, in an indication of the difficulty in establishing how many passengers had set out on the voyage, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said some 200 people had been crowded into a 66-foot boat.No children found alive
Rescuers said two men who survived were spotted trying to save children by holding them over their heads as waves buffeted them. But the children died, state TV said. “It's an enormous tragedy,” Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI. “In solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery” for the dead.In 2022, some 105,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores, some 38,000 more than in 2021, according to Interior Ministry figures.
“It’s inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the ‘price’ of a ticket paid by them in the false prospect for a safe voyage,” said Meloni, a far-right leader whose governing allies include the anti-migrant League party.
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