Yasmine, as she told the rescuers her name, is the only survivor of the shipwreck in the Mediterranean of a barge carrying 45 people according to the German NGO Compass Collective.
This 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was rescued this morning. The crew of the Trotamar III sailboat heard screams in the middle of the night while it was shipwrecked about ten miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa.
An air chamber, the key to saving yourself
Yasmine was saved thanks to the life jacket she was wearing and which was able to grab onto an air chamber at the time of the shipwreck. He had been at sea for three days and in this way he managed to last about twelve hours in the water. “In general, her condition seems good. We believe that she remained in the water for about twelve hours,” the doctor at the island’s Mauro Marino clinic who examined her explained to the media.
“It was almost a miracle that we could hear their cries. We tried to look for other castaways, but there were none. After a day of storms, with 23 knots of wind and waves five meters high, it was almost impossible,” said the captain of the sailboat, Matthias Wiedenlübber.
In a state of hypothermia
Yasmine He was traveling with his brotheras he told the members of Compass Collective, but he was not so lucky and disappeared in the shipwreck. When Yasmine arrived on board she was freezing, shivering and “clearly in a state of hypothermia. Although she could barely walk, she was reactive” they explained from Trotamar III.
The girl said that they had left Sfax (Tunisia) four or five days ago and that due to bad weather, the boat they were traveling on capsized and teveryone ended up in the water.
Yasmine has been able to speak with her father, who is still in Tunisia and has been transferred to Lampedusa.
Some 356 migrants disembarked in Lampedusa during the night, before the girl rescued by the NGO crew arrived at dawn.
