By Frances D'Emilio -
The Associated Press
At least 58 migrants died after the wooden boat they were traveling in hit rocky reefs and broke apart off southern Italy before dawn on Sunday, the Italian coast guard and United Nations agencies reported. UN).
“So far, 80 people have been recovered alive — some of whom made it to shore after the shipwreck — and 43 bodies have been found along the shoreline,” the Coast Guard said in a statement shortly before noon.
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The exact figures are difficult to establish, they fear that there are dozens of missing people.
A reporter for Italian public television RAI, standing next to the wreckage on the beach, said
60 bodies have been recovered
, citing local authorities.
With his foot she pointed to a life preserver that read the word “Smyrna”, a Turkish port also known as Izmir.
Rescuers recover a body on a beach near Cutro, in southern Italy, Sunday, February 26, 2023. Giuseppe Pipita / AP
The authorities indicated that the bodies, covered with cloth, were transferred to the sports stadium in the city of Crotone.
"It's a huge tragedy"
More than 170 migrants are estimated to have been on board the ship, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, in a joint statement citing survivor accounts.
Among the passengers were "children and entire families
," the statement said.
Most came from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
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"It's a huge tragedy," Crotone mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI television.
"In solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery" for the dead.
The ship crashed against the reefs in the middle of a violent swell, buffeted by strong winds.
Wreckage from the boat washed up on a beach on the Ionian coast of Calabria, where pieces of bright blue wood looked like matches scattered across the sand.
