Two children, aged one and two, died after a violent explosion that caused a fire on a boat loaded with migrants bound for Lampedusa
.
On the boat, with 37 people on board, there are two other burned children and five injured women, one of them serious, which is about to be taken to Palermo by helicopter rescue.
This is confirmed by sources of the Port Authority, who say they are not certain about the dynamics of the accident.
An investigation has been opened to determine what triggered the fire.
At first the news of the explosion of a cylinder had spread, but if this had been the cause, the small boat would have sunk
and the victims would have been much more numerous.
Probably - but it will be up to the investigation to clarify it - one of the petrol cans that was the fuel supply went on fire.
A few hours earlier,
the Greek Coast Guard reported that they rescued 80 migrants this morning
aboard a sailing boat whose navigation had been made difficult by bad weather off the southern coast of the Peloponnese.
Two Coast Guard patrol boats and three passing boats were heading for the area, while the sailboat was being towed by a tugboat to a nearby port,
the Coast Guard said.
Since the beginning of October, at least 27 people have drowned in two separate shipwrecks off the coast of the islands of Lesbos and Kythera.
On the other hand, the spokesman of the Tunisian National Guard, Housemeddine Jebabli, announced on Facebook that
units of the Coast Guard
of the Maghreb country have blocked 35 irregular migration operations in the central area of the country in the last 72 hours,
intercepting at sea 949 migrants, of which 749 foreigners.