Fifty-four migrants trying to reach Italy died of thirst when their inflatable boat ruptured in the Mediterranean, according to testimony from the sole survivor, Abbes Settou, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday. Settou, who drank sea water to survive, was spotted clinging to a jerry can and the remains of the stricken boat off the Tunisian coast on Monday night by fishermen who alerted the coast guard, the UNHCR said. The man, who is being treated in a Tunisian hospital, said there was no fresh water on board and people started to perish within days, including three members of his family. He said 55 people boarded the boat in the Libyan capital Tripoli in late June, and that more than half were from Eritrea, including himself. They were unable to call for help because the boat’s satellite phone was broken, according to Father Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest who spoke to the survivor by telephone on Wednesday. “He said they were at sea for 15 days in total,” the priest told AFP. “They had apparently reached Italian waters but they weren’t able to call for help because the satellite phone was broken, so the wind pushed them back out into open sea. “During those 15 days the people on board slowly began dying of hunger and thirst. They were lost, they could not orient themselves. “He is recovering. In a few days he said he would be moving to a refugee camp.” In his account of the ordeal to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the survivor said the boat had punctured and air started to leak out. Settou later spoke to AFP, saying he survived “by the grace of God.” Speaking of his fellow passengers, which also included Somalis, he said “they died of hunger, of thirst, of exhaustion. We threw their bodies overboard.”
