11-year-old girl survives Mediterranean shipwreck as 44 others are feared dead

# 11-year-old girl survives Mediterranean shipwreck as 44 others are feared dead

*Event date: 2024-12-14*

An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone survived a Mediterranean shipwreck after spending three days in the water, while 44 other people who were on the same boat are feared dead, according to the supplied DW report.

The report said the migrant boat left Sfax, Tunisia, with 45 people on board and capsized in stormy weather on its way toward Europe. Rescue crews from CompassCollective heard calls in the darkness and found the girl floating at around 2:20 a.m. after she had reportedly been in the water for three days.

Rescuers said she had been keeping herself afloat with improvised devices made from tire tubes and a simple life jacket. She had no drinking water or food when she was found and was described as hypothermic but responsive. She was taken to hospital in Lampedusa, Italy, where she was said to be recovering.

The report quoted CompassCollective as saying it assumed the girl was the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 passengers drowned. Search and rescue operations had been launched, but the same report noted that no bodies or clothing had yet been found near the reported sinking site.

The wider context is bleak. The International Organization for Migration says it has recorded more than 24,300 deaths and disappearances on the Tunisia-to-Europe route since 2014, including around 2,050 in 2024 alone, according to the supplied text. That makes the route one of the deadliest migration corridors in the world.

The report also noted that another NGO, Mediterranea, feared that as many as three boats may have sunk in the same storm, each carrying large numbers of people from Tunisia in late November. Those warnings underline how hard it remains to track and verify sea disasters when vessels go down far from shore and without reliable communication.

Italy’s tougher line on migration was also part of the reporting. Rome said arrivals fell to 64,000 in 2024, down from more than 153,000 in 2023, a comparison that helps explain why the rescue and migration debate remains politically charged across the Mediterranean.

What stands out most in the supplied evidence is the contrast between one child’s survival and the likely loss of everyone else aboard. The girl’s rescue is extraordinary. The larger story is the routine danger that pushed 45 people onto a storm-hit boat from Tunisia in the first place.