Migrants 'thrown overboard' in religious row as toll climbs

Police say they arrested 15 Muslim migrants suspected of attacking Christian passengers after a religious row

AUGUSTA: Italian police on Thursday said 12 African migrants had died after being thrown overboard by fellow passengers in the latest high-seas tragedy in the Mediterranean, as another 41 boat migrants were feared drowned in a separate incident.

Police in the Sicilian port of Palermo said they had arrested 15 Muslim migrants suspected of attacking Christian passengers after a religious row on a boat headed for Italy, which is struggling to cope with a huge spike in illegal migrants arriving on its shores.

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The 12 victims were all Nigerians and Ghanaians while the 15 suspects came from Senegal, Mali and Ivory Coast. They were charged with "multiple aggravated murder motivated by religious hate," according to a police statement.



Shipwrecked migrants sit on the deck of a rescue vessel as they arrive in the Italian port of Augusta in Sicily on April 16, 2015. PHOTO: AFP


Distraught survivors, who set off from Libya on Tuesday before being rescued by an Italian vessel on Wednesday, told a "dreadful" story of "forcefully resisting attempts to drown them, forming a veritable human chain in some cases," police said.

In another drama, 41 migrants were missing feared drowned on after their dinghy sank en route to Italy, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said, mere days after 400 migrants are believed to have died in another shipwreck off the coast of Libya.

The four survivors in Thursday's shipwreck, who came from Nigeria, Ghana and Niger, said their boat sank after setting sail from Libya with 45 people on board.

Their vessel was spotted by a plane, which alerted the Italian coastguard, but by the time a navy ship arrived to help them only four passengers were found alive.



Italian police officers look on as shipwrecked migrants line up to receive first aid from Italian Red Cross. PHOTO: AFP

The latest deaths bring the number of migrants killed while trying to cross the Mediterranean this year up to 900, the IOM said, up from 96 between January and April last year.

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The flood of people trying to reach Italy in recent days has been "extraordinary", IOM's Giovanni Abbate told AFP in the Sicilian port of Augusta, where more new arrivals were disembarking.

Driven by desperation and undertaking a perilous journey, he said it was not the first time disputes between migrants on packed boats had turned deadly, in reference to the 12 Christians allegedly thrown overboard.