The Italian coastguard has recovered 13 bodies of refugee women on Monday afternoon and about a dozen people are missing after a migrant boat sank overnight off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the coastguard said.
The source pointed out that all the bodies belong to women, including pregnant women, as some witnesses reported that there may be eight children and a number of other pregnant women among the missing. Twenty-two people were rescued and taken to the port of Lampedusa in Sicily.
"It is inconceivable that people die in this way," said Mayor Toto Martello, the mayor of Lampedusa, after the incident, which came just days after the October 3, 2013, tragedy. (Smugglers) and encourage operations that make the Mediterranean safer. "
The 2013 disaster plunged Italy into grief and triggered a large-scale military operation for maritime relief operations, before other drowning incidents prompted the EU and non-governmental organizations to send rescue ships.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), some 19,000 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe since Lampedusa drowned.
The year 2016 was the worst in this area with about 5,000 migrants missing.
Since the beginning of 2019, 1,041 migrants have died at sea.
According to WHO experts, 2018 was the lowest in recent years (2,297 victims), but it is "the most serious" given the ratio of departures to deaths.
A total of 39,000 immigrants arrived in Greece and 17,000 in Spain. The number of arrivals in Italy was 7892, compared to 21,119 in the same period of 2018.
In an effort to stop the tragedies at sea, several European countries, including Italy, France, Germany and Malta, have recently set up a distribution mechanism for immigrants aimed at ending case-by-case negotiations with every sinking in the Mediterranean.
The mechanism will be submitted to the EU for approval at the meeting of the Council of Interior Ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
