“No one should die in the sea because we don’t have any legal ways of going to Europe. So it is very necessary to get legal ways for the people so that they get visa… and they are able to use a plane or a ship because this boats [sic] they are so… dangerous,” Ingo Veert, captain of the German RESQSHIP aid vessel that is aiding in search efforts in the Mediterranean, told Rudaw's Arez Khalid.
Two shipwrecks off the coast of Italy last week left more than a dozen migrants dead. Most of the passengers were people from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Kurdish areas in Iran (Rojhelat), as well as people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Syria.
Italian authorities reported that 67 people were on board one of the vessels that capsized. Italy’s coast guard has found 34 bodies from a wrecked ship 120 nautical miles off the coast of Calabria.
“We have about 4,000 people every year losing their life in the Mediterranean Sea,” he added.
Veert explained that there is no safe way to make the journey across the Mediterranean Sea, even for modern boats with fewer passengers, adding that some journeys have been made with rubber dinghies carrying 160 people.
He said that the longest he knows people surviving shipwrecks there is 4 or 5 days without food and with little to no drinking water.
The situation reminds him of a similar rescue with a boat coming from Libya.
“They’re really poor people. They sail under the ship’s deck. This is the cheapest place on board because it is the most dangerous palace onboard,” Veert said of the wreck that killed 10 passengers.
Among all the routes taken, the “Central Mediterranean” route between the coast of North Africa, Italy and Malta is the deadliest in the world.
According to data from Italy’s interior ministry obtained by AFP, arrivals to the country have dropped significantly since the start of the year, with 24,100 migrants arriving, compared to 57,500 in the same period in 2023.
Around 20,000 people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region migrated out of the country in the pursuit of a better life last year, with at least nine losing their lives on dangerous and illegal smuggling routes, according to the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugees and Displaced Affairs.
