The rescuees included seven children, 26 women and 92 men. Those in the hold paid about half as much as those above. Police arrested the men after speaking to survivors during the night after they arrived in Palermo.
Advertisement
“Those who could not get out in time would have drowned nearly immediately”, it said.
They have so far rescued over 1,600 people in the Mediterranean, dropping many of them on land in Italy.
“The global Organization for Migration (IOM) said survivors told them that “up to 250 people had been forced to sit in the hold”.
Some migrants who fell into the water had life vests; others, struggling to swim, were tossed life vests by rescuers.
The LÉ Niamh has rescued 125 people from a highly overloaded inflatable vessel 115km northwest of Tripoli in the Mediteranean.
On Saturday more than 400 migrants were picked up mostly off the Libyan coast in operations in which the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) vessel Bourbon Argos also took part, the coastguard said.
But the UN agency said that while the migrant and refugee crisis on Europe’s coastlines was deepening, it was still the developing world that bears most of the brunt of continued conflicts around the globe.
Advertisement
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had promised to give those who died a decent burial, and so far 58 bodies have been recovered from around the wreck, which is lying on the sea-bed some 380 metres below the surface.
