Three girls 9, 11 and 17 drown as migrant boat hit by huge waves

Three sisters have drowned after a "dangerously overcrowded" migrant boat heading to Italy overturned over the weekend. Rescuers rushed to save the migrants coming from Libya on Friday evening, but the bodies of the sisters, aged 9, 11 and 17, were later found inside the boat.

65 others were rescued by migrant charity RESQSHIP, with their Nadir vessel scrambled to assist. The organisation said in a press release that "waves of up to 1.5 meters repeatedly washed over" the rubber boat which was flooded with water. Three family members of the sisters that perished survived, including the mother and a brother.

Survivors said one person fell overboard earlier in the crossing, the charity said. The missing person had not been found at the time the news release was published.

RESQSHIP, whose team found the vessel at 1am on Saturday, said those rescued included "numerous women", three of whom are pregnant, children, and a seven-month-old baby.

Barbara Sartore, Communications Coordinator on board of the NADIR said: "While we were evacuating the people one by one from the rubber boat onto the NADIR, I suddenly heard screams and someone pointed to the water inside the boat.

"It became clear that there were bodies underneath the surface. The boat was dangerously overcrowded, it was pitch-dark, water was flooding in, people were panicking.

"In that chaos, it was impossible to see that the three sisters, sitting deep inside the boat, had already drowned. When the survivors realised, it was sheer horror."

The medical team attempted to resucitate the three girls, but they couldn't be saved.

The Nadir is a 19-meter motor glider, the Nadir that operates in the central Mediterranean, "observing, documenting, reconnoitring - and if there is no other ship around, we help people in distress at sea, as required by international maritime law", the charity explains on its website.

RESQSHIP said the migrant boat had departed from Zuwara, a coastal city in Libya, on Thursday and started taking on increasing amounts of water just hours after departure.

The Nadir was alerted by the hotline rescue operator Alarm Phone on Friday evening.

The charity said many of those rescued suffered severe chemical burns due to the mixture of seawater and petrol inside the boat.

They received treatment on board the NADIR and were looked after through the night, RESQSHIP said.

The Italian Coast Guard evacuated 14 people, including medical cases and their relatives, on Saturday afternoon and brought them to Lampedusa, one of southern Italy's Pelagie Island in the Mediterranean Sea.

The NADIR also reached the island later that evening with the remaining survivors and the bodies of those who had died.