Migrant boat sinks: 200 feared dead off Libya coast
They found no more survivors after scouring the waters overnight
Crew of the Italian Navy destroyer Mimbelli rescuing survivors at the site where a boat carrying over 600 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast. PHOTO: AFP
PALERMO/SICILY:
Hopes faded of finding more survivors on Thursday from a shipwreck in which 200 migrants are feared drowned, as rescue ships were called to the aid of more migrant boats in the same area of the Mediterranean.
“We are witnessing a genocide caused by European selfishness,” said Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando as the Irish navy ship LE Niamh docked in the port carrying some 370 survivors of Wednesday’s disaster and 25 corpses, including three children. Orlando, speaking on Italian television as hearses arrived to take the bodies away, called on European leaders to do more to prevent such disasters and to allow more refugees to re-settle in their countries.
A police official told reporters a distraught woman from the boat had been searching for her three children who had gone missing in the crossing. She was taken to view bodies and came out weeping, said the officer, though it was not clear whether she had seen her family.
Police said they had detained five men suspected of having piloted the boat that overturned on Wednesday and of having had a role in trafficking the migrants. Vessels from the Italian and Irish navies and humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) saved about 400 people from the fishing boat, thought to have been carrying up to 600 people, mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war. They found no more survivors after scouring the waters overnight.
Italian vessels continued to search the area on Thursday, a coastguard spokesman said. Seas were very calm on Thursday, perfect conditions to attempt the sea crossing, said a Reuters photographer aboard the privately funded Phoenix, a vessel run by MSF and the Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 7th, 2015.
Hopes faded of finding more survivors on Thursday from a shipwreck in which 200 migrants are feared drowned, as rescue ships were called to the aid of more migrant boats in the same area of the Mediterranean.
“We are witnessing a genocide caused by European selfishness,” said Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando as the Irish navy ship LE Niamh docked in the port carrying some 370 survivors of Wednesday’s disaster and 25 corpses, including three children. Orlando, speaking on Italian television as hearses arrived to take the bodies away, called on European leaders to do more to prevent such disasters and to allow more refugees to re-settle in their countries.
A police official told reporters a distraught woman from the boat had been searching for her three children who had gone missing in the crossing. She was taken to view bodies and came out weeping, said the officer, though it was not clear whether she had seen her family.
Police said they had detained five men suspected of having piloted the boat that overturned on Wednesday and of having had a role in trafficking the migrants. Vessels from the Italian and Irish navies and humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) saved about 400 people from the fishing boat, thought to have been carrying up to 600 people, mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war. They found no more survivors after scouring the waters overnight.
Italian vessels continued to search the area on Thursday, a coastguard spokesman said. Seas were very calm on Thursday, perfect conditions to attempt the sea crossing, said a Reuters photographer aboard the privately funded Phoenix, a vessel run by MSF and the Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 7th, 2015.