ROME (HRNW) – Thirty people are missing and 17 were rescued in the central Mediterranean on Sunday after the boat in which they were travelling from Libya capsized in bad weather, Italy’s coastguard said.
The tragedy comes just weeks after a Feb. 26 shipwreck near the southern region of Calabria, in which at least 79 died.
Alarm Phone, a charity that picks up calls from migrant vessels in distress, assumed the 30 people were dead and blamed Italy for not sending its coastguard despite being repeatedly alerted on Saturday that the boat was in trouble.
“Clearly, the Italian authorities were trying to avoid that the people would be brought to Italy, delaying intervention so that the so-called Libyan coastguard would arrive and forcibly return people to Libya,” it said in a statement late on Sunday.
However, Italy’s coastguard said the capsizing occurred outside the Italian Search and Rescue area (SAR), and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Rome was doing all it could to avoid shipwrecks.
“We have always argued that it’s necessary to stop the departures of unseaworthy vessels,” he told Il Messaggero daily on Monday.
“It seems to me that everything that our coastguard, our navy and our finance police are doing is to be praised,” he said, adding that Rome and the European Commission were supplying Libya with more patrol boats.