An Italian Coast Guard helicopter, on Monday (April 3), rescued 32 migrants, including a child who had been stranded on the uninhabited isle south of Sicily in the central Mediterranean, said the country’s coast guard, in a statement.
The officials were forced to use a helicopter after “particularly adverse” weather and high waves which made evacuation by sea from the islet of Lampione, was impossible, said the Italian Coast Guard.
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The helicopter took the migrants to Lampedusa which is said to be the usual landing spot for sea migrants from Tunisia and Libya and made several trips amid winds of up to 50 knots, reported Reuters, citing the coast guard. The rescue hours after helicopters had dropped food and blankets on Lampione, part of the same archipelago as Lampedusa island, to aid the migrants until they would be saved, reported the local media.
While it was not immediately clear if the case was of human smuggling, a report by the ANSA news agency, said that the rescue migrants are from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Mali. The charity Alarm Phone, which attends calls from migrant boats in distress said that a vessel with at least 500 on board needed rescuing in international waters off Libya, on Monday, reported Reuters.
A report by the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) Missing Migrants Project, published in November last year said, more than half of the 50,000 individual deaths documented occurred to and within Europe. Mediterranean routes accounted for at least 25,104 lives since 2014.
Last month, more than 1,300 migrants had been rescued in three separate operations off the southern tip of Italy, the coast guard had said in a statement. As of early March, over 17,000 people have reached Italy.
(With inputs from agencies)
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