Coastguard spokesman Filippo Marini said around 400 people had been rescued from the water while 25 bodies had been recovered.
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Thankfully it has been a while since a major shipwreck in the Mediterranean, but the sinking yesterday off the Libyan coast is a reminder that people are still willing to risk their lives to reach the European Union.
Other rescue ships from charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Italian Coast Guard also went to the scene. The mother caressed the hand of her daughter Azeel, a little more than 1 year old, as the father, Mohammed, sat next to them.
“After that he saw that the baby was getting deep in the water”.
“So it just shows that they’re not being treated very well from where they’re coming”.
But an emergency worker in Malta who helped in the rescue effort tells the BBC, “I think it’s unlikely that any additional survivors will be picked up”. With seas warm and calm, rescuers expressed hopes others might be alive.
Italian Police/Reuters Surviving migrants are seen swimming in the area where their wooden boat capsized and sank off the coast of Libya on August. 5, 2015.
Survivors-and bodies-are going to Palermo, Italy.
As the Le Niamh pulled in, a little boy, peering between the metal railing of the ship, waved and gave a thumbs up sign.
“Some of the people are torn by grief”.
Chiara Montaldo, an MSF coordinator for Sicily, said “they need to speak, to vent”, explaining how the aid organisation brought a team of cultural mediators to the centre “who speak the same language as them, who share the same culture”.
Police arrested the five men after speaking to numerous survivors during the night after they arrived in Palermo.
Hundreds of migrants trying to reach across the Mediterranean from Libya are feared to have drowned after their fishing boat capsized off the North African country.
Nearly 60 million people were on the move in 2014, 40 percent more than in 2011.
Among those rescued was a 19-month-old Palestinian girl, along with her parents, Doctors Without Borders said.
Initial reports put about 700 passengers on the overcrowded fishing boat but interviews with survivors – mostly Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war – reduced that estimate and the figure could still change.
Gil noted these fishing boats favored by smugglers have two lower decks. “People desperately clutching life belts, boats and anything, fighting for their lives among the drowning and those who were already dead”.
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