EU: 11-year-old is only survivor from capsized migrant boat

Migrant rescue agencies on Wednesday said they saved an 11-year-old Sierra Leone girl from the Mediterranean after she spent three days fighting for her life at sea when the refugee boat she was traveling in sank.

The girl told rescuers that 45 people had been on the boat when it set off for Europe from Sfax, Tunisia.

"We assume that she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned," said CompassCollective, which assists in migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea.

CompassCollective said crew members on one of the group's vessels, on the way to another rescue, "heard calls in the darkness" and plucked the girl from the water around 2:20 a.m. (0120 GMT).

'No drinking water or food'

The group later released a statement saying, "The 11-year-old girl, originally from Sierra Leone, had been floating in the water for three days with two improvised floatation devices made from tire tubes filled with air, and a simple life jacket."

The girl told rescuers that her vessel capsized in a storm en route to the EU.

Representatives from CompassCollective said, "The girl had no drinking water or food with her and was hypothermic, but reactive and oriented," when she was rescued.

Although they said the girl was "very tired," rescuers said she was recovering well at a hospital in Lampedusa, Italy, where she was rushed after being saved.

Mediterranean rescue effort, more than 150 feared drowned on deadly route

Italian news agency ANSA reported that search and rescue operations aimed at finding further survivors had been launched, though it was also noted that so far, no bodies nor clothing had been found near the site of the reported sinking.

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it has recorded more than 24,300 deaths and disappearances on the sea route between North African Tunisia and the EU nations of Italy and Malta since 2014.

Some 2,050 migrants have drowned or gone missing on the route in 2024.

Mediterranea, another NGO, said it fears as many as three boats may have sunk in this week's storm. Each vessel — carrying 45, 75 and 45 people respectively — departed Tunisia in late November.

The group says it has the information via "Alarm Phone," a hotline that processes SOS calls from migrants at sea.

IOM says many shipwrecks on this migrant route, one of the deadliest in the world, often go unreported, noting, "boats in distress disappear with no survivors."

Italy has taken an increasingly hard line on migrant arrivals.

Rome says that policy has significantly curbed arrivals, 64,000 of which were recorded in 2024, as compared to over 153,000 in 2023.

js/jcg (AFP, Reuters)