11-year-old girl survives three days in the sea after shipwreck

An 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was the only person rescued after a migrant boat believed to have 45 people on board sank.

An 11-year-old girl survived three days in stormy seas by clinging to two tire inner-tubes after the migrant boat she was traveling on sank off the coast of Italy, a charity said.

The girl was discovered by chance by the Trotamar III, a boat belonging to the refugee rescue charity Compass Collective, and was likely the only survivor among 45 people on board when her vessel sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa, the nonprofit said in a statement Wednesday.

“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice despite the engine running,” Matthias Wiedenlübbert, the Trotamar III’s skipper, said in the German charity’s press release.

The crew heard the child’s calls at 3:20 a.m. local time and immediately began a maneuver in the darkness to save her, alerting the rescue control center in Rome, Italy, before later handing her over to the rescue service on Lampedusa.

Rubber inner tubes, which the 11 year old girl used as floatation devices. Compass CollectiveThe 11-year-old's boat had originally departed from Sfax, a port city on Tunisia's central coast, before hitting the days-long storm that prevented many rescue boats from setting sail.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/girl-11-survived-three-days-sea-shipwreck-rcna183918

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