Girl, 11, rescued after three days floating alone in Mediterranean after shipwreck

According to a humanitarian organization, an 11-year-old girl from Sierra Leone was found floating in the Mediterranean Sea near the southernmost Italian island of Lampedusa, believed to be the sole survivor of a shipwrecked migrant boat that departed from the port of Sfax in Tunisia.

The girl was rescued by a German-flagged sailboat named "Trotamar III," which has been operating in the Mediterranean since last August under the German charity "Compass Collective," and was brought to Lampedusa on Wednesday morning. At the time, she had neither food nor water and was suffering from hypothermia.

"Even with the engine running, we could hear a girl's voice, which was an incredible coincidence," said sailboat captain Matthias Weidenluebbert in a press statement. Katja Tempel of "Compass Collective" told the Associated Press that the crew immediately shut off the engine and searched for the source of the sound: "She was exhausted, tired, and cold, but overall, she was in good condition when we pulled her out of the water."

According to the girl, she had been floating in the sea for three days using an inflatable inner tube and a life jacket. She told rescuers that she had set off with about 45 other people on a metal boat and had maintained contact with two other people for two days before the connection was lost. "We don't know what happened to these people," Tempel said, "We assume they all drowned, but we don't know the specifics."

The girl was found after a storm that lasted for several days, during which winds reached over 23 knots per hour and waves exceeded 2.5 meters. The "Trotamar III," a 13-meter boat with a rotating crew of six, has rescued over 230 people since joining the humanitarian rescue operation last August. After rescuing the girl, the boat distributed life jackets to 53 people on a wooden boat without an engine and reported their location to the Italian authorities.

In total, the crew of "Trotamar III" has helped 1,700 people by distributing life jackets, alerting authorities, and accompanying them until rescue arrives. In deteriorating situations, those in distress are transferred to the sailboat. According to UN statistics, mainly based on survivor accounts, 1,536 people have died or gone missing and are presumed dead in the central Mediterranean so far this year.

According to the Italian Interior Ministry, 64,234 people have arrived in Italy as of Thursday. This is a 58% decrease compared to the same period last year, when 153,211 people arrived. "I want to emphasize that this girl is just a symbol of the [deaths] in the Mediterranean," Tempel said, "She is a person, she may have lost loved ones, and it is very sad. But this is just a symbol of the tragedy that is happening."