ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Italian authorities on Friday announced the recovery of the bodies of another 14 people who lost their lives after their ship capsized off the Italian coast earlier this week, bringing the death toll to 34.
Italy’s coast guard said in a statement on Friday that they had found a total of 34 bodies of people whose vessel was shipwrecked nautical 120 miles off the coast of Calabria overnight Sunday-Monday. This includes 14 corpses found earlier on the day and 12 others recovered the previous day.
An informed source told Rudaw on Friday on the condition of anonymity that a total of 35 bodies have been recovered so far.
According to Italian authorities, 67 people were onboard the ships that capsized on Sunday, Rezan Hama Salih, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) representative to Rome, told Rudaw on Thursday.
She added that most of the 11 survivors are Kurds.
Italian authorities are investigating the incident, according to the KRG representative who said she would meet with a judge later on Thursday. Twenty-one from the Kurdistan Region are missing.
Some of the survivors who spoke to Rudaw put the total number of people onboard at as high as 80.
The survivors are receiving treatment at Italian hospitals and some of the families of the dead hold faint hope of hearing from the loved ones who were seeking better lives in Europe but their dreams were crushed by merciless waters.
Every year, tens of thousands of people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region take perilous routes out of the country towards Europe in hope of escaping endless crises in the country, including a lack of employment, political instability, and corruption.
Around 20,000 people from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region left the country in 2023 and at least nine of them lost their lives on dangerous and illegal smuggling routes, according to the Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugees and Displaced Affairs.
