MILAN (AP) – An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone has been found floating in the Mediterranean Sea off Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa, believed to be the the sole survivor of a shipwrecked migrant ship who had left the port of Sfax in Tunisia, a humanitarian group said on Thursday.
The girl was rescued by a German-flagged yacht called the Trotamar III, which took her to Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, according to the German charity Compass Collective which has been working in the Mediterranean since August 2023.
She had no food or water with her, and she was suffering from hypothermia.
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“It was an amazing coincidence that we heard a girl's voice even though the motors were running,” said the captain of the sailboat, Matthias Weidenluebbert, in a press release.
The crew immediately cut the engines and found the source of the voice, Katya Tempel of the Compass Collective told The Associated Press “She was tired and exhausted and cold, but generally, she was fine when we pulled her out of the water.”
According to the girl's account, she had been floating in the sea for three days using innertubes pressurized with air and a life jacket. She told rescuers that she had left in a metal boat with about 45 others, and that she had been in contact with two others until two days before the rescue, when the connection was broken.
“We don't know what happened to the people,” Tempel said. “We're assuming they all drowned, but we don't know what.”
The girl was found after a storm that had lasted for days, with winds reaching more than 23 knots and waves over 2.5 meters (8 ft.)
The Totamar III, a 13-meter vessel with a rotating crew of six, joined humanitarian rescue efforts in August 2023, saving more than 230 people so far. After picking up the girl, the ship distributed life jackets to 53 people aboard a wooden boat without a motor, and reported their whereabouts to Italian authorities.
In total, the Totamar III team has helped 1,700 people, providing life jackets, alerting authorities and staying with them until rescue arrives. In cases where the situation worsens, the missing persons will be transferred on board the sailing vessel.
According to UN statistics, which are based largely on the accounts of survivors, 1,536 people have died or disappeared missing and presumed dead in the central Mediterranean so far this year. A total of 64,234 have arrived in Italy through Thursday, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior. That's down 58% from last year, when 153,211 had arrived in that period.
“I want to emphasize, this girl is just a sign for (deaths) in the Mediterranean,” Tempel said. “She is one person, and it is very sad that she lost relatives. But it is only a symbol for the tragedy that is happening.”
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Murru reported from Rome. Continue AP's coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
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