11-year-old girl rescued as sole survivor of shipwreck off Italian coast

An 11-year-old girl was miraculously rescued after three days of being stranded at sea when a shipwreck off Italy's Lampedusa island is believed to have killed the remaining passengers on the vessel.

Germany's CompassCollective, the charitable organization that rescued the girl at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, said its boat was en route on a different rescue operation when they heard her shouting from the water.

"It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child's voice despite the engine running," Skipper Matthias Wiedenlübbert said in a press release detailing the rescue.

The shipwrecked metal boat, which had initially set off from Sfax, Tunisia, was caught in a storm that lasted several days in the central Mediterranean, according to the release.

There were an estimated 45 passengers onboard the ship before it sank, the organization said.

The 11-year-old girl said she drifted in the water for three days with two improvised life rings made from air-filled inner tubes and a simple life jacket.

She survived without any drinking water or food and despite suffering from hypothermia, she was "responsive and oriented," according to the release.

The girl told the organization she had been in contact with two other passengers in the water two days after the shipwreck, but that the contact had broken off.

After receiving medical attention, the girl was moved to a migrant holding center in Lampedusa where Italian Red Cross staff were looking after her, according to the organization.

CompassCollective's Katja Tempel said the rescue signals an ongoing crisis for migrants embarking on dangerous journeys by boat in attempts to get to Europe.

"Even in storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean. We need safe passages 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," Tempel said in the release.

According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the migration route between Tunisia, Libya, Italy and Malta is one of the most dangerous passages in the world with over 24,300 people disappearing or dying since 2014.

"The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable," IOM Director General António Vitorino said in 2023. "With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalized," he added.