Although the international media continue to report that some 30 irregular migrants lost their lives when their boat capsized on Friday morning, no clues on what might have been a serious tragedy have yet been found.
A sole survivor was rescued by a Maltese trawler on Friday afternoon and was airlifted ashore for medical treatment.
Despite efforts by the Armed Forces of Malta to find survivors, corpses, or evidence of debris from a boat said to have capsized en route from Libya to Sicily, apparently early Friday morning, extensive searches have not yielded a single shred of evidence of the alleged tragedy.
An extensive search of the area, ranging some 90 nautical miles south of Malta has been called off.
Contacted by The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday, an Armed Forces spokesperson sounded a note of caution over international media reports claiming some 30 irregular migrants had lost their lives in the incident. The figure, according to the spokesperson, is unsubstantiated and “very inconclusive”.
The incident has now become the subject of an immigration police investigation, which will determine how many people should be missing as well as the nationality of the surviving migrant.
The police confirmed yesterday that investigations were underway.
If the reports that several migrants drowned after their boat capsized, it would have been the first such incident in the vicinity of Malta so far this year, which is expected to be a busy one for the central Mediterranean migratory route, of which Malta sits right in the middle.
On Friday afternoon, Saviour Ellul – the owner of a Maltese fishing trawler, the Laura 2 – had notified the AFM’s Rescue Co-Ordination Centre (RCC) at Luqa Barracks’ operations’ room that the trawler had recovered a sole migrant alleging to be the sole survivor of a boatload of irregular migrants that had capsized on Friday morning.
The survivor told the AFM he had been in the water for about five hours before he was spotted and rescued by the Maltese trawler. He also said the boat had been at sea for three days before it capsized.
The trawler had picked him up some 75 nautical miles south of Malta and, once informed, the AFM initiated a medical evacuation operation and a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission.
The survivor was airlifted to St Luke’s Hospital by an AFM Air Wing rescue helicopter, while a PBN Islander aircraft conducted various search patterns in the area to no avail.