An 11-year-old girl has been rescued after being stuck to her inner tube for three days in stormy weather in the Mediterranean.
Rescuers from the NGO Compass Collective said they were on their way to another emergency when they heard her calls for help.
The unnamed girl, from Sierra Leone, told them that she had set off with 44 other people from Sfax in Tunisia. Their boat sank and all the other migrants are presumed dead.
Thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe die during the treacherous journey in the Mediterranean every year.
Compass Collective spokeswoman Katia Temple told the BBC that rescuers on board the Trutamar 3 ship found the young Sierra Leonean migrant wearing a simple life jacket and two tire inner tubes around her waist at about 03:20 (02:20 GMT) on Wednesday.
The girl told them that the metal boat she was on had sank within seconds due to strong gusts hit by 3.5-metre (11.5 ft) waves, and that she – and two others – had been together in the water for a while but then lost contact.
Rescuers handed her over to the Italian authorities on the island of Lampedusa, where she was able to walk and talk.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says 30,955 migrants have died – or are still missing – crossing the Mediterranean since it started recording numbers 10 years ago.
Italy has borne the brunt, receiving more than 63,000 people this year alone, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
However, the numbers have declined, partly due to the hardline policies pursued by the right-wing Italian government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
