One person was missing on Friday
evening following another migrant boat shipwreck in the Central
Mediterranean.
The man, from Burkina Faso, was on board a small boat that
capsized in the Maltese search and rescue (SAR) area
approximately 42 nautical miles from the Sicilian island of
Lampedusa.
37 other people, including the missing man's brother, were
rescued by the humanitarian sail boat Nadir operated by German
NGO ResQship and three fishing vessels present in the area,
before being transferred onto an Italian coast guard patrol boat
and taken to Lampedusa, where they were disembarked in the early
hours of Saturday morning.
There followed seven further landings on the island to a total
of 380 migrants and refugees as of 11 am local time.
The latest arrivals came on the heels of seven separate landings
to a total of 247 people on Friday, taking to 823 the number of
people present in the hotspot on Saturday morning, compared to
an official capacity of little under 400.
Some were due to be transferred by passenger ferry to mainland
Sicily on Saturday evening.
Also on Friday, the coat guard recovered a body in an advanced
state of decomposition, thought to be one of the people missing
after two migrant boat shipwrecks on April 24.
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