Early on Thursday, another large migrant boat was spotted in the area, just 30 miles from the Libyan coast, and one of the Italian rescue ships was sent to its aid, the spokesman added.
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Survivors of the capsizing and sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants are brought aboard Irish and Italian Navy life-boats to the Dignity I MSF search and rescue vessel which responded to the emergency in the Medi…
Irish patrol vessel Niamh, first on the scene of the disaster, arrived in Palermo with 367 survivors, including 12 women and 13 children, as well as 25 bodies recovered from the sea.
“The arrested are suspected of causing the confirmed deaths of 26 migrants and the presumed deaths of about 200 people who, according to witnesses, were locked in the hold of the boat that capsized”, a police statement said.
Some migrants who fell into the water had life vests; others, struggling to swim, were tossed life vests by rescuers.
Individuals-smugglers, principally based mostly in Libya and charging hundreds of dollars for passage, have despatched greater than 90,000 migrants by sea to Italy thus far this yr, the UN refugee company says.
Rai reported that around 200 people could be still missing in the disaster, because according to survivors’ accounts there were around 600-650 people onboard the metal boat, with many travelling in the hold.
About 800 of the thousands of people who had to evacuate from a huge and fierce Northern California wildfire have been allowed to return, but for some the relief quickly turned to grief when they found only…
“This incident shows that as long as there are no safe alternatives for migrants, criminal gangs will continue to pack people into unseaworthy vessels and we can expect more tragedies”, Soda said.
Martin Xuereb, of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station in Malta, said: “Some drowned, some survived”.
When the Dignity1 arrived at the capsizing site, it was hard to tell how many were in the water, said Juan Matias Gil, a Doctors Without Borders search and rescue operations field coordinator.
More than 2,000 people have already died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe this year, the global Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
“We believe that the boat was carrying about 600 people, but we will never really know how many sunk”. “The Lé Niamh has rescued 1280 migrants before this operation”.
Cochetel too criticised the EU for not yet implementing the plan to transfer 16,000 asylum seekers from Greece over two years, and said the plan in any case needed to be beefed up.
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MSF said it initially received a call from Rome’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre about a wooden boat in distress at around 9am but was diverted to carry out a rescue of another vessel.
