German rescue team finds 10 bodies of suspected migrants off Italy’s Lampedusa island

ROME (AP): Rescue workers found 10 bodies of suspected migrants below the deck of a wooden boat off Italy’s tiny Lampedusa island on Monday, the German aid group Resqship said, as the Italian coast guard searched for missing people from another vessel shipwrecked off the country’s southern coast.

The crew aboard Resqship’s boat, the Nadir, “is currently caring for 51 people. The rescue came too late for 10 people,” the group said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“A total of 61 people were on the wooden boat, which was full of water. Our crew was able to evacuate 51 people, two of whom were unconscious – they had to be cut free with an axe,” it added. “The 10 dead are in the flooded lower deck of the boat.”

The other search and rescue operation off the Calabrian coast started following a Mayday call by a French boat, sailing about 120 miles (193.12 kilometers) from Italian shores, at the limit of the SAR areas under the jurisdiction of Greece and Italy, the Italian Coast Guard said in a statement.

After reporting the presence of the half-sunken boat, rescuers recovered 12 migrants from the vessel. The survivors were brought to the Calabrian port of Roccella Jonica, where they were disembarked and entrusted to the care of medical personnel.

One of the migrants died soon after, the coast guard said. It was not immediately clear the number of missing people from that boat.

The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (IMRCC) of the coast guard in Rome immediately diverted two merchant vessels sailing nearby to the scene of the rescue. Assets from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex also helped.