Three Sudanese sisters aged nine, 11 and 17 drowned when their overcrowded rubber dinghy ran into rough seas during an overnight attempt to reach Italy from Libya, a German sea-rescue charity said on Sunday. RESQSHIP’s sailing vessel Nadir, alerted by the Alarm Phone hotline, reached the craft in the central Mediterranean early Saturday and brought 65 people to safety, including the girls’ mother and brother, three pregnant women and a seven-month-old baby. The bodies of the sisters were recovered from inside the half-submerged boat, which had been pounded by waves of up to 1.5 metres. One passenger remained missing. Fourteen urgent medical cases were transferred to an Italian coast-guard patrol vessel and taken to Lampedusa; the Nadir later disembarked the remaining survivors and the bodies of the girls on the island. The dinghy had departed the Libyan port of Zuwara on Friday night. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 700 people have died on the central Mediterranean route so far this year and over 30,000 since it began keeping records in 2014, underscoring persistent calls from UN agencies and aid groups for stronger search-and-rescue efforts.