voices are raised to question the action of the emergency services and the authorities

In Italy, the dead are still counted after the tragedy of Crotone in Calabria: at least 62 migrants drowned and 37 people are still wanted, but without hope. At the same time, some are openly questioning themselves and wondering if the relief and local authorities have done enough to help these migrants in great difficulty.

>> What we know about the shipwreck in the Mediterranean

Sunday, February 26, at dawn, the makeshift boat was spotted 40 miles (about 64 kilometers) from the coast, several hours before sinking. A plane from Frontex, the European coastguard agency, gives the alert. Two Italian patrol boats then set out to sea in the night but turned back because the waves were too high for them. Around 4 a.m., the boat nevertheless approaches the coast at 150 meters according to survivors who confided in Doctors Without Borders. But the boat hits something hard and breaks. Many children, women and men drowned.

“We have already rescued migrants 50 miles from Crotone”

For Orlando Amodeo, former first aid doctor and Crotone police officer, this tragedy could have been avoided. “I think this tragedy was almost intentional! If I know that a ship has been in trouble since the day before, I will rescue it. Why didn’t we do it? We have boats that can easily cope with force 6 or 7 winds. We’ve done it before, 40 and even 50 miles south of Croton and rescued them.”

The parish priest of a neighboring parish in Crotone was also indignant: “Couldn’t we plan to get there before they died?” For its part, the NGO Médecins sans Frontières wonders about this rescue which did not take place, just 150 meters from the coast.

Impossible to intervene according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior

The authorities have already reacted to this controversy. The Italian Minister of the Interior went there and his undersecretary first denounced “crass political propaganda, an insult to the efforts of hundreds of men and women in uniform who fought with all their might for hours, against the cold and the fury of the sea, to rescue the survivors and search for the missing” . The under-secretary then claimed that the coastguard had found it impossible to intervene due to the weather conditions, with force 7 winds.