On Friday, Lampedusa Island Mayor Filippo Mannino confirmed that five men and three women died while traveling aboard a boat found in the Mediterranean Sea.
RELATED:
Two Boats Save 103 People Amid Threats From the Libyan Guard
Teh African undocumented migrants died as a result of low temperatures. Among the dead were a pregnant woman and a newborn baby.
"After the woman threw her frozen son into the sea, a man jumped into the water to retrieve the baby, but he was swallowed by the waves. Therefore, in addition to the eight corpses, there are two people missing at the moment," the ADNKronos newspaper reported.
The boat, which was found some 70 miles from Lampedusa, was also carrying 46 people, who were rescued and brought to the Favaloro pier overnight. Among them were two pregnant women.
“I appeal to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni so that the government does not leave us alone in managing this great tragedy,” Mannino said, referring to the humanitarian problems related to migratory flows across the Mediterranean.
"The survivors are now in Lampedusa. Many people are traumatized and shocked, including the baby's father, who had to witness his family's death," Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said.
"It is unacceptable that a shipwreck in the Maltese search and rescue region has once again claimed victims when it could have been avoided. It is time for these tragedies to stop."
On Friday, the Sea Eye's ship rescued 109 migrants who were traveling in unseaworthy vessels. "They were six days at the mercy of the brutal European border policy. It is inexcusable," the German NGO pointed out.
For the past five days, this humanitarian ship has been waiting in vain for the Italian authorities to assign it a port to disembark the migrants.
The new rules set by the Meloni administration, however, force humanitarian ships to sail for several days before being able to dock in an Italian port, which is usually not close to the site where humanitarian NGOs carried out a salvage operation.