Archive photo

  • Migrants, Oim: 1,283 deaths in the Mediterranean in 2019
  • Migrants: 11,439 landed in 2019, half of last year

Share

05 January 2020A group of 33 Kurdish-Iraqi and Kurdish-Iranian migrants was tracked down at night by law enforcement officers along the Adriatic coast of Salento, in San Cataldo, Lecce's marina. Among the migrants, two women, a family unit with two children aged 5 and 9, and unaccompanied minors.

Ten people found completely wet and in a state of serious hypothermia, forced to descend into the freezing sea from the boat that transported them to reach the shore. A woman and a boy were hospitalized for a suspected dislocation.

Rescued and welcomed by the emergency team of the Red Cross, they found shelter in the emergency vehicles in San Cataldo where the two Kurdish-Iraqi children fell asleep in the heat in a State Police car. Rescuers said they had been traveling for a week and had reached the Italian coast aboard a rubber dinghy sailed from Albania. The group was transferred to the Don Tonino Bello center in Otranto.