On the night between Sunday and Monday (July 8), a Tunisian fishing boat rescued 44 migrants from a small metal boat that sank in international waters between Sicily and Libya.

The migrants, hailing from Gambia, Guinea, Mali and Senegal, were transferred to an Italian Coast Guard patrol boat and disembarked in Lampedusa. They said that three of their travel companions had gone missing.

A patrol boat from the Finance Guard searched for the missing migrants during the night, and then the Coast Guard continued the search throughout the day.

The group of 44 included one woman. They recounted setting sail from Sfax, Tunisia, on Friday night, paying 800 euros each for the crossing.

Police documents witness accounts

Separately, at the beginning of July, a group of 47 migrants arrived in Lampedusa from Zawiya, Libya. Agrigento police, assisted by an interpreter, documented their accounts. The migrants, from Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Mali, detailed an incident involving an Ivorian man who did not have a life vest and could not swim.

According to the witness accounts, those steering the boat, once they heard the screams of the migrants, went back to try to save the man who, however, was not found due to the darkness.

No one dove into the water to find the shipwrecked person and after a while the boat continued to sail toward Lampedusa, they told police.

Also read: Italy: Three more bodies recovered, around 60 still missing from migrant shipwreck