Govind Tekale
The TROTAMAR III crew rescued an 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone at 3:20 a.m. on December 11, after she set sail with others on a metal boat fromTunisian coast. The girl kept herself afloat using two tire tubes alone in the Mediterranean Sea and a life jacket following a shipwreck that claimed an estimated 44 lives.
“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice despite the engine running,” said Skipper Matthias Wiedenlübbert of the German rescue organization CompassCollective. The crew discovered her while responding to a different emergency call.
The metal boat departed from Sfax, Tunisia, carrying approximately 45 people before encountering storms with waves exceeding 3 meters in height. The vessel capsized near Lampedusa, Italy. The girl reported brief contact with two other survivors two days after the wreck, but the connection was lost.
The girl survived three days at sea, though Dr. Mauro Marino, who examined her, provided a different estimate to Repubblica daily. Despite having no food or water and suffering from hypothermia, the girl remained “responsive and oriented,” according to CompassCollective’s medical report.
On Wednesday, December 11, the Italian Coast Guard and police boats searched the area where the shipwreck occurred. ANSA news agency reported that searchers found no bodies or clothing remnants in the vicinity.
The rescue comes amid mounting casualties on the Central Mediterranean migration route. International Organization for Migration (IOM) data shows over 20,000 people have died or disappeared while attempting Mediterranean crossings since 2014. While Compass Collective believes that the number has crossed 30,000. Italy has hosted over than 165,000 migrants in 2021 alone, according to United Nations figures. This included almost 12,000 unaccompanied children.
IOM Director General António Vitorino stated in 2023: “The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable. With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized. States must respond. Delays and gaps in State-led SAR are costing human lives.”
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CompassCollective’s Katja Tempel called for policy changes: “Even in storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean. We need safe passages for refugees and an open Europe that welcomes people and gives them easy access to the asylum system. Drowning in the Mediterranean is not an option.”
The girl received medical attention before being transferred to a migrant holding center in Lampedusa, where Italian Red Cross staff provided care. During the subsequent search operations, rescue efforts were complicated by storm conditions with winds reaching 23 knots and 2.5-meter waves.
European governments face criticism for prioritizing border security over human lives. Human rights organizations document systemic gaps in migrant protection, including failures to rescue people in distress and cases of maltreatment. The route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy, and Malta remains one of the world’s deadliest migration passages.
