About 10 migrants are missing and presumed drowned after two boats carrying mainly Pakistani, Sudanese and Somali migrants sank about 15 km south of the stepping stone island, which is closer to Africa than mainland Italy.
A newborn baby girl and three teenagers are among the 27 victims so far recovered.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni greeted the shipwreck with “dismay”, accusing the traffickers of being “inhuman” and saying “the tragedy shows that rescue operations are not enough, they do not address the causes of this dramatic problem”.
German rescue NGO Sea-Watch expressed “anger and frustration; if we had been warned, we could have rescued them”.
The opposition, meanwhile, criticised the government’s laws as intended to “impede rescue operations”.
The centre-right responded that “yet another tragedy is the traffickers’ fault”.
The Meloni government has assigned landing ports to NGO rescue ships far from their operating zones, allegedly hampering their efforts to save lives.
Deputy Prime Minister and League leader Matteo Salvini blamed “the ultra-fans of indiscriminate welcoming” for the tragedy.
ANSA
