Boat fag checkin in,
ROME, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Forty one migrants are thought to have died in a shipwreck last week in the central Mediterranean, Italian authorities and United Nations agencies said on Wednesday, citing survivors who have been taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Local public prosecutor Salvatore Vella and three U.N. agencies confirmed media reports that four people who survived the shipwreck had told rescuers they were on a boat carrying 45 people, including three children.
The survivors – a 13-year-old boy, a woman and two men – arrived in Lampedusa on Wednesday, almost six days after the sinking of their boat, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Unicef and UNHCR, said in a joint statement.
The boathad set off on Aug. 3 from Tunisia’s Sfax, a hot spot in the migration crisis, but capsized and sank during the night after being hit by a big wave, the survivors were quoted by multiple sources, including Ansa news agency, as saying.
The Italian Red Cross and the Sea-Watch charity rescue said the four had survived by hanging on to life jackets or other inflatable rubber devices and then finding another empty boat at sea, on which they spent several days adrift.