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An 11-year-old girl has been rescued after spending three days clinging to inner tubes in the middle of a storm in the Mediterranean.
Rescuers from the non-governmental organization Compass Collective said they were heading to another emergency when they heard her calls for help.
The anonymous girl, from Sierra Leone, told them that she had left with 44 other people from Sfax, in Tunisia. Their boat had sunk and all the other immigrants were presumed dead.
Thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe die each year during the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.
Compass Collective spokesperson Katja Tempel told the BBC that rescuers aboard the Trotamar III ship had found the young Sierra Leonean migrant wearing a simple life jacket and two inner tubes around her waist at around 03:20 ( 02:20 GMT) on Wednesday.
The girl told them that the metal boat she was traveling on had sunk in a matter of seconds due to a strong storm with waves 3.5 meters high and that she and two other people were in the water together for a while but Then they lost contact. .
Rescuers handed her over to Italian authorities on the island of Lampedusa, where she could walk as well as talk.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says that 30,955 migrants have died – or remain missing – crossing the Mediterranean since it began recording figures 10 years ago.
Italy has been the hardest hit, receiving more than 63,000 this year alone, according to data published by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
However, the numbers have declined, in part due to the hardline policies of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Italian government.
