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A teenage girl has been murdered on a migrant boat as it sank while crossing the Mediterranean, it has been claimed.

The 16-year-old was allegedly raped by a man on the boat, angered at seeing his wife and daughter drown when the yacht started sinking.

A 27-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the victim’s mother, who witnessed the incident, reported it when they landed in Roccella Jonica, southern Italy.

They were on a boat from Turkey when it sank in the middle of the Med, according to Italian outlet AGI.

Search and rescue teams later recovered further 35 bodies, bringing the official death toll to 36. Among them were 15 children.

It has also been claimed that it took the coastguard four days to arrive at the scene while passengers clung to the remains of the vessel.

The perilous journey has been organised from a spot near Bodrum, Turkey.

More than 70 people are thought to have paid for a place in the boat, with majority of passengers being Kurds from Iran and Iraq, the broadcaster reports.

Rescue and coast guard officials on the dock with a cover sheet after bringing survivors of a migrant shipwreck on shore in Italy.
12 survivors of the shipwreck were brought on land, but another woman later died (Credits: AP) (Picture: Valeria Ferraro/AP)

Mitra Ghasem Karimi, from Iran who now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, had travelled to Roccella Ionica in desperate search for her brother and sister who had been on the vessel and were lost at sea.

She told Sky News: ‘There was no water, there was no food in the boat – but to the families and the people who got in that damn boat, [the smugglers] said yes, there is water, food.

‘My brother and sister had life jackets, but they would not let them take them with them. Why?’

Mitra and her husband paid €6,000 to hire a helicopter to look for any signs in the vast sea.

A screen of the Italian coast guard showing a sinking migrant boat in the Mediterranean.
The sinking vessel (Picture: Facebook/Corpo delle Capitanerie di Porto Guardia Costiera

The sea route across Mediterranean is one of the deadliest for migrants, with thousands of lives lost each year.

Since 2014, almost 30,000 migrants have been recorded missing in the Mediterranean, according to the Missing Migrants Project.

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For more stories like this, check our news page.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.

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