11-year-old migrant girl survives 3 days in Mediterranean Sea by clinging to inner tubes

An 11-year-old girl survived for three days at sea after a shipwreck off the coast of Italy by clinging to a pair of tire inner tubes, rescuers said Wednesday.

The child, originally from Sierra Leone in West Africa, was in a rickety migrant boat that set off days earlier from Tunisia.

The boat sank off the coast of Lampedusa during a storm, German rescue charity Compass Collective said in a statement. As many as 45 migrants were aboard. The girl, who was wearing a life vest, was the sole survivor.

The rescue crew heard her calls in the darkness at 3:20 a.m. on Wednesday.

“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice even though the engine was running,” Matthias Wiedenlübbert, the skipper of Tromatar III, a German sailing ship that has been assisting civil sea rescuers in the Mediterranean since August 2023, said in the statement.

The crew looked for other survivors, but after a day-long storm with eight-foot waves and strong winds “it was hopeless,” the skipper added.

The child had no drinking water or food with her, according to rescuers. But although she was hypothermic, she was responsive.

Lampedusa, an Italian island closer to North Africa than to mainland Italy, is often used as a staging post for migrants in search of a better life abroad.

Nicola Dell’Arciprete, head of U.N. children’s agency UNICEF in Italy, said the incident was yet another tragedy on one of the world’s most dangerous sea migration routes.

“While many of us are celebrating these days, our thoughts go to the girl who landed today in Lampedusa, the sole survivor of yet another shipwreck in the Mediterranean,” Dell’Arciprete wrote in an X post. “Every life matters. We need safe routes, search and rescue. Protecting children is a duty.”

More than 30,000 migrants have been recorded missing in the Mediterranean since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration. Thousands of people attempt the dangerous journey each year by boat from the northern coasts of Africa and Turkey to seek asylum or migrate to Europe without the required travel documents.

Italy’s far-right government has attempted to crack down on illegal migration, although its plan for migrants to be detained in Albania while their asylum claims are adjudicated has faced legal roadblocks.

Italy is the largest single entry point for asylum seekers making their way into the European Union from African shores. The hard-line plan aimed at deterring would-be migrants from making the journey is being closely watched by other European leaders.

“Even during storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean,” Katja Tempel, a spokeswoman for Compass Collective, said Wednesday. “We need safe passage 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.”