The most dramatic picture: they found a mother hugging her baby at the bottom of the Mediterranean

A ship loaded with migrants sank near the coast of Lampedusa October 7 last. Only 22 of the 50 people on board survived. Among the victims that the Italian coastguard found 8 days later at about 60 meters deep, there were a woman hugging her baby.

This dramatic image was impregnated into the retina of the diver Rodolfo Raiteri, the man who led the search for the sinking victims. As he told the newspaper The Republic It was the worst experience of his professional life.

"The sight of this baby there was unbearable, a blow to the heart," he said. "You're never ready for something as intense as that," he explained.

Raiteri, 52, said that "to see this little body lying in the background, next to what was probably his mother, was like getting a punch in the belly".

"The fact that they are so close to each other and by the position of the woman's arms, I think that he held it until the end"he said.

The bodies of 13 women, some of whom pregnant women, were recovered the same day of the tragedy. Bad weather prevented the search for other people, including eight children and other pregnant women.

The images filmed with an underwater drone show the wreckage, with clothes and remains of objects at the bottom of the sea. Other photographs published by the Italian press show the bodies of the drowned floating around the sunken ship.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) told the paper Corriere della Sera I had managed to follow the baby's aunt.

She is one of the survivors, Aminata from Ivory Coast, who said that I was in the boat with two other sisters and their childrenthey all disappeared.

Aminata identified one of the first found bodies, but is still looking for the four-year-old nephew, as well as the second sister and her eight-month-old baby, he said.

But removing the bodies from the seabed will not be easy. "They are 60 meters deep and we can not stay more than five minutes. We will have to be very fast, "said Raiteri.

"We are going down two by two … and we are going to try to put the bodies in bags already at the bottom of the sea. But it is not so easy because of the position they are in. Otherwise we will have to use ropes, "he said.