Survivor battled to stay alive for 20 hours in Italian waters after migrant boat capsized

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Life jackets were prohibited to be taken on board a boat that capsized near Italy despite taking the perilous journey from Libya to Europe, a survivor said on Thursday, recalling his 20-hour long battle for survival in the sea. 

Ibrahim Ali, a survivor from the Kurdish town of Tel Aran near the city of Kobane in northern Syria, boarded the boat from Libya’s al-Zawiyah city on July 29 and was promised to be taken to Italy. Although a fee of $5,000 was agreed upon to be taken on what Ali was told would be a “VIP” boat, the smugglers changed the vessel once they left the Libyan maritime borders.

“We boarded plastic car tires with us in case such an event happens, we floated above the water around 45 kilometers away from Lampedusa [Island] when Italian guards came to rescue us,” Ali told Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara, adding that they were rescued at around 6 am on August 1.

Ali said that they created a human chain to hold on to the tire and floated for around 18 to 20 hours until the guards came to the rescue. They were 19 people in total, 14 from Tal Aran, two from Kobane, two Syrian Arabs, and a Cameroonian man who was in charge of the boat.

“When we were in the Libyan waters, the smugglers were Libyan, after that they moved us to a smaller boat and an African man from Cameroon was on it,” Ali said.

According to Ali, the smugglers forbade them from wearing life jackets since their luminous colors were detectable by Italian and Libyan planes at night.

Ali said that they suffered burns when the boat’s fuel mixed with the water, but they are in good health now and are staying in the Italian city of Milan. 

“We saw death with our own eyes, some of them wanted to end their lives because they lost hope of surviving, but we convinced them to have patience,” he said. 
 
Kobane, where Ali and his friends were from, is located in the Kurdish enclave under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on the border of Syria and Turkey. In 2014, Kobane endured a siege and attacks by Islamic State (ISIS) militants. The city then became a symbol of the fierce fight it put up against the jihadist group. Tel Aran is a Kurdish town under the control of the Syrian regime. 

However, Kobane then became entangled in the fight between the Kurdish forces, who had liberated it, and the Turkish army. The city continues to endure Turkish bombardment. 

Due to the unsettling condition in their home countries, migrants opt to take the arduous and dangerous journey through the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. A large number of those fleeing poverty and war cross from Africa and the Middle East via Italy in hopes of a better life on the European continent.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, more than 1,800 people have been reported dead or missing along the Central Mediterranean route since the beginning of the year. The road is the same one Ali and his friends took to get to Europe and it accounts for over 75 percent of the total number of victims in the entire Mediterranean over the past decade.