Rescue group saves 11-year-old girl floating alone in the Mediterranean for days after shipwreck

MILAN (AP) - An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was found floating in the Mediterranean Sea off Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa, believed to be the only survivor of a shipwrecked migrant boat that had departed from the port of Sfax in Tunisia, a humanitarian group said Thursday.

The girl was saved by a German-flagged sailboat named Trotamar III, which brought her to Lampedusa on Wednesday morning, according to the German charity Compass Collective that has been operating in the Mediterranean Sea since August 2023.

She had neither food nor water with her, and was suffering from hypothermia.

"It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the voice of a girl even though the motors were running,'' the sailboat's captain, Matthias Weidenluebbert, said in a press statement.

The crew immediately cut the engines and searched for the source of the voice, Compass Collective’s Katya Tempel, told The Associated Press "She was exhausted and tired and cold, but in general, she was fine when we fetched her out of the water."

According to the girl's account, she had floated in the sea for three days using innertubes inflated with air and a lifejacket. She told rescuers that she had set out in a metal boat with about 45 others, and that she had been in contact with two other people until two days before the rescue, when the contact was broken.

"We don't know what happened to the people,” Tempel said. "We assume that they all drowned, but we don't know what."

The girl was found following a storm that had lasted for days, with winds reaching more than 23 knots and waves above 2.5 meters (8 feet.)

The Totamar III, a 13-meter vessel with a rotating crew of six, joined humanitarian rescue efforts in August 2023, rescuing more than 230 people to date. After picking up the girl, the boat distributed life jackets to 53 people aboard a wooden boat without a motor, and reported their location to Italian authorities.

In all, the Totamar III crew has assisted 1,700 people, handing out life jackets, alerting authorities and staying with them until rescue arrives. In cases when the situation worsens, the stranded people are transferred on board the sailing ship.

According to U.N. statistics, which are based largely on survivor accounts, 1,536 people have died or gone missing and are presumed dead in the central Mediterranean so far this year. A total of 64,234 have reached Italy through Thursday, according to the Italian Interior Ministry. That’s down by 58% from last year, when 153,211 had arrived in the period.

"I want to emphasize, this girl is just a sign for the (deaths) in the Mediterranean,” Tempel said. "She’s one person, and its very sad that she probably lost her relatives. But it is just a symbol for the tragedy that is happening.”