A 20-day-old baby boy was found dead
on a migrant boat by Italian coast guards overnight after they
came to the rescue of the vessel in waters near the island of
Lampedusa.
The child, who was travelling with his 19-year-old mother from
Ivory Coast, suffered respiratory problems and the family were
trying to get to Italy for him to have treatment, sources said.
A doctor examined the corpse, found no signs of violence and
concluded that the death was caused by hypothermia combined with
the fragile condition of the baby, the sources said.
The boy died at around 19:00 on Wednesday.
The boat, which had 36 people on board, including nine women and
two minors, had departed from Mahres in Tunisia at about 4am.
The child's father was not on the boat as he has remained in
Tunisia.
Italian prosecutors have given the all-clear for the body to be
buried.
Two of the people on the boat had suffered burns.
The baby's body has been taken to Lampedusa's mortuary, where
there are also the bodies of four other victims of crossings
across the Mediterranean from North Africa.
They are two Tunisian men whose bodies were recovered on October
7 - the Tunisian consulate has requested DNA testing of the
bodies - and two women, including one who died in a clinic on
the island on Wednesday following a heart attack after she
suffered hypothermia during her journey.
At the time of writing there were 1,365 people at Lampedusa's
migrant hotspot after 640 arrived in a series of boat landings
in the last 36 hours.
Around 360 people are due to be transferred to Porto Empedocle
in Sicily on Thursday.
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