Eleven-year-old from Sierra Leone survives three days at sea

By Alvise Armellini

An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was rescued overnight after three days at sea as the sole survivor of a shipwreck off Italy's Lampedusa island, a rescue charity said on Wednesday.

Germany's CompassCollective said crew on its vessel were en route to another emergency when they heard shouting from the water and picked up the girl around 3 a.m. wearing a life jacket and hanging on to a pair of tyre tubes.

She told them she had set off from the Tunisian city of Sfax in a metal boat carrying 45 people that sank in a storm.

Charity crew took care of the girl and took her to Lampedusa which is closer to North Africa than the rest of Italy and is often a first landing point for migrants.

After medical assistance, the girl was moved to a migrant holding centre where Italian Red Cross staff and volunteers were looking after her, the Red Cross said.

"In this festive period, in which the majority of us is lucky to be with their loved ones, my thoughts go out to the girl from Sierra Leone," said Nicola Dell'Arciprete, head of U.N. children's agency UNICEF in Italy.

"Yet another tragedy that increases the number of dead and missing in the Central Mediterranean."

The sea migration route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy and Malta is one of the most dangerous in the world, with more than 24,300 disappeared or dying since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration.

NGO Mediterranea said in a statement it feared three more migrant boats had disappeared on the route between Tunisia and Italy in recent weeks, and urged authorities to launch a search operation to rescue possible survivors.

"Lives in danger at sea cannot be abandoned," said Mediterranea's Luca Casarini.

Italy says its hardline approach on immigration is contributing to a fall in sea arrivals. In the year to date, it has recorded around 64,000 migrant landings, compared to more than 153,000 in the same period of 2023.