The Italian coast guard and firefighters have recovered more than 30 bodies after a wooden migrant boat broke up in rough seas on Sunday near the southern coast of mainland Italy, authorities reported.
State TV quoted the local prefect’s office as saying that by late morning 33 bodies had been recovered and 58 people had been rescued. Italian news agency AGI said among the bodies was a baby a few months old.
Citing unidentified port authorities near the Calabrian coastal town of Crotone, RAI state radio said the boat was carrying more than 100 migrants when it ran into trouble at dawn in the Ionian Sea. Italian news agency Lapresse later quoted unidentified rescue officials as saying there could have been as many as 180 people on board.
State TV said about 27 of the survivors made it to shore, apparently on their own.
Pieces of wreckage lay on the beach at Steccato di Cutro, near the point where the boat apparently broke up.
Firefighters, including rescue divers, had recovered 28 bodies, three of which were pulled by a strong current far away from the wreckage.
“It is a huge tragedy,” Crotone mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI State TV.
“In solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery” for the dead, Voce said.
Details of the migrants’ nationalities were not immediately provided in the reports.
It was not immediately clear where the boat had set out from, but migrant vessels arriving in Calabria usually depart from Turkish or Egyptian coasts. Many of these boats, including sailboats, often reach remote parts of Italy’s long southern coastline without the help of the coast guard or humanitarian rescue vessels.