The Italian coast guard has recovered the bodies of five migrant men and three migrant women in the Mediterranean. One of the women reportedly was pregnant. The bodies of two people were still missing after initial search operations.
Survivors told Italy's ANSA news agency that two missing bodies are that of a four-month-old baby, whose grief-stricken mother had put the body in the sea, and that of a man who reportedly drowned while trying to recover the baby's body.
A total of at least 52 people are believed to have been on board the 6-meter vessel, which had sailed off from Sfax in Tunisia on January 28.
Rescuers found the eight bodies in a boat late on Thursday (February 2), according to the mayor of Lampedusa, Filippo Mannino. Local media who spoke to the survivors through translators said they likely had died of cold and hunger.
The 42 survivors meanwhile were brought ashore to the island of Lampedusa, were they were found to be soaked in water.
The majority of migrants on board the ill-fated vessel were reported as being of African origin.
Read more: Irregular EU border crossings hit 'highest' level since 2016
Lampedusa overwhelmed
Mayor Mannino meanwhile appealed to Italy's central government to help the authorities on the island. He lamented that alone, they could no longer cope with the situation.
Just the previous day, two more boats with a total of 75 migrants on board had arrived in Lampedusa. He also added that dead migrants were now being brought to be buried in Lampedusa almost weekly.
Due to its proximity to the Tunisian coast, which is only 138 kilometers away, the Italian island has become a preferred destination for migrant boats.
Read more: Lampedusa 'open' but 'lacks resources', mayor
Crackdown on NGO vessels
The deaths come as Italy's government finds itself in a diplomatic spat with the Council of Europe over the crackdown on charity rescue vessels introduced just over a month ago.
The decree law forces charity ships to only perform one rescue at a time, and to head straight to an assigned port instead of waiting at sea to rescue further boat migrants. Furthermore, such NGO ships have so far been ordered to take the rescued migrants to faraway ports in northern Italy rather than being assigned nearby ports of safety in southern Italy.
Since those journeys take more time and cost the charities more, the organizations running these vessels say that the decree severely limits their capacities to save more lives.
The Council of Europe shares that view, warning Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi in a letter that the law "could hinder the provision of life-saving assistance by NGOs in the Central Mediterranean."
Piantedosi has reportedly replied to the letter, saying that said the decree did not put any lives at risk.
Read more: More than 300 migrants rescued by Geo Barents and Ocean Viking
Pull factor?
Far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government introduced the decree law on the assumption that NGO vessels might create a pull factor for migrants to embark on the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean in the first place.
The government has said that it will prioritize policies that will break the business models of people traffickers who move migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.
However, the divisive decree appears to do little to that end: charity vessels rescue only around 10% of all migrants brought to safety in Italy; most migrants are actually rescued by Italian coast guard or navy vessels.
Read more: Charged with saving migrants' lives – rescuers facing criminal prosecution
Migration continues to rise despite decree
Despite the introduction of the law, nearly 5,000 migrants have managed to reach Italy since the beginning of 2023, according to the Italian interior ministry.
This is two thirds more than measured in the same period last year and four times more than the number of migrants who reached Italian oil in the same period in 2021.
In all of 2022, more than 100,000 people succeeded in reaching Italy from the shores of north Africa. However, according to Human Rights Watch, more than 1,200 people died in the Mediterranean Sea during the same period.
Almost 25,000 deaths have been recorded in what has been coined the world's most dangerous migration route since 2014.
Read more: Maltese minister claims half of migrants come from 'safe' Asian countries
with AFP, ANSA, KNA