Some 117 migrants including at least two children who attempted to cross the Mediterranean this week are unaccounted for, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Saturday, a day after three people from the same dinghy were rescued, Euronews reports.
“According to survivors migrants on board were 120. There are therefore 117 missing people including 10 women and 2 children (one was just 2 months old),” IOM spokesperson Flavio Di Giacomo said on Twitter.
“Many of the migrants on board were western African, but survivors say that there were also about 40 Sudanese on board,” he added.
According to survivors #migrants on board were 120. There are therefore 117 missing people including 10 women and 2 children (one was just 2 months old). Many of the #migrants on board were western Africans,but survivors say that there were also abt 40 Sudanese on board https://t.co/3untHhJgWK
— Flavio Di Giacomo (@fladig) January 19, 2019
According to a statement from the Italian navy, the sinking dinghy was first spotted on Friday afternoon by a patrol aircraft, which threw two life-rafts into the water.
A helicopter was then dispatched and recovered three people — one from the water and two from a safety raft. Suffering from severe hypothermia, they were taken to a hospital in Lampedusa, a small Italian island halfway between Tunisia and Malta.
They told authorities that they had left Garabulli, east of Libya’s Tripoli, on Thursday night but that the boat started sinking after 10 or 11 hours at sea.
Some 4,216 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea through the first 16 days of 2019, double the amount that did so over the same period last year, according to the IOM.
Spain remains the preferred gateway to the Old Continent with 80% of all Mediterranean arrivals registered there. So far, the country has received 3,369 irregular migrants. Last year, arrivals over the same period tallied 1,609.
However, the number of deaths over the first two weeks of the year has been halved to 83 from 199 last year.