An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was rescued after surviving three days at sea as the sole survivor of a shipwreck off the coast of Italy’s Lampedusa island, a charity reported on Wednesday.
The rescue took place when the crew of Germany’s CompassCollective was en route to another emergency and heard cries for help from the water. At around 3 a.m., they found the girl, wearing a life jacket and clinging to two tire tubes. She later told the crew she had been aboard a metal boat carrying 45 people that sank during a storm after departing from the Tunisian city of Sfax.
The rescue team provided immediate care and transported her to Lampedusa, which lies closer to North Africa than mainland Italy and is a common first entry point for migrants. After receiving medical attention, the girl was transferred to a migrant holding center where Italian Red Cross staff and volunteers took over her care, CompassCollective said in a statement.
Nicola Dell’Arciprete, head of UNICEF Italy, expressed his concern: “In this festive period, when most of us are fortunate to be with loved ones, my thoughts are with the girl from Sierra Leone. This tragedy adds to the growing number of lives lost or missing in the Central Mediterranean.”
The Mediterranean migration route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy, and Malta is one of the most perilous in the world. Since 2014, over 24,300 people have gone missing or died along this route, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Italy’s tough immigration policies have contributed to a decrease in sea arrivals, with around 64,000 migrant landings reported this year, compared to more than 153,000 during the same period in 2023.