«There were dozens of little ones on board»- Corriere.it

The first of the two small bodies found on Saturday floated about twenty meters from the beach at Steccato, the same one where the Summer Love opened halfway last Sunday at dawn after the keel was being gutted by a rock. To see the little one — three years of age, wearing a denim jacket – around five in the morning there were volunteers from the Civil Protection who patrol that stretch of shore day and night. Then divers from the fire brigade and sailors from the Coast Guard arrived to lay him on a white sheet. Same scene eight hours later, but this time in Botricello, a couple of kilometers west, going down towards Reggino. Here the child was approximately six years. They saw him thanks to a hand that came out of the water, he was wearing shorts and a shoe.

Not counting the missing (a figure that could vary between 30 and 50), the total number of dead has now risen to 70 while there are 62 victims who – thanks to the powerful work of the Scientific – have already received a name and a surname. The fact that the bodies found yesterday are those of two children fits into one of the most upsetting aspects of this tragedy, that of the high number of minors who lost their lives in the sinking of the caique.

They are still the precise figures provided by the prefect of Crotone Maria Caroline Hippolytus to tell us that the dead under the age of 18 are
27, all identified except the last case in Botricello. For now, only this acronym will appear on the white coffin of this little one: KR70M6. To clarify: KR stands for Crotone, 70 indicates that we are dealing with the seventieth body recovered, M means that it is a male while 6, in fact, is the presumable age. But here are other numbers, in even more detail: between females and males there are 18 victims under the age of 12 while they are 9 those included between 13 and 17 years old. One was 8 months old, two were one year old and two were three years old. Then we count one four, one five, three six, one seven, two eight, and two nine. It’s still: two eleven year olds, one twelve year old, one thirteen year old, one fourteen year old, one fifteen year old, four sixteen year olds, and two seventeen year olds.

Not finished here: predictable that even in the eventual recovery of other bodies the presence of children is prevalent. From the stories of survivors,” he explains Joanna DiBenedettospokesperson for Save the Children, an NGO these days at the forefront of assistance to the Cara di Capo Rizzuto – we know that on Summer Love there were dozens of children under ten, the most vulnerable. Imagining, among other things, that very few, perhaps none, were able to swim, it was impossible to escape the violence of the force 5 waves. And perhaps many were also overwhelmed by other larger people in those dramatic moments of escape for the salvation from hold to deck.

Then there are heartbroken parents like the Afghan Wahid that 150 meters from the beach, in addition to his wife Munikalost three young children: Maewa and Hadija, 12 and 8 years oldnow rest in a white coffin while of Tajib, 5, nothing is known. The man, who survived with his 14-year-old eldest son, had left Herat to escape the Taliban but now he continues to say that everything that happened was my fault: I shouldn’t have left. In front of a coffin in the funeral home at the Palasport, Mina, 60 years oldmourns the death of his sister and nieces including one of 7 years. We had also spoken on Saturday evening and she, Aisha, was happy: they were about to arrive, she told theAdnkronosjust arrived from Holland.

But the minor survivors? According to Save the Children, two of them have lost all their parents. One is twelve years old, he is in the Pediatrics ward of San Giovanni di Dio and talking to the psychologists he keeps repeating that dad will soon come to get me from Sweden. Two other teenagers would have faced the crossing alone and it remains to be seen whether they have relatives in Europe to whom, possibly, they will be entrusted.

Each of the stories that revolve around the Summer Love leaves dismay. One of the little one Hassan, three years, the son of Shahida Raza, the captain of the Pakistan women’s national hockey team who died in the sinking. The child remained in his country and lives with Saadiathe sister of the twenty-nine-year-old player whoap he said that Shahida had embarked on the caique to find suitable treatment for Hassan, partially paralyzed after a stroke. At the Karachi hospital she had been told that abroad – she recalls Saadia – she would have had the possibility of recovery. Now? I’m proud of her, she did everything to save her Hassan from her.