The Irish vessel now has 92 men, 26 women and seven children on board. It is less than 200 years since two million hungry people fled Ireland for America, Australia and the UK.
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The newly-arrived couple were handed the stickers with numbers on them as soon as they arrived, with the migrants getting sorted onto buses and taken to reception centres according the numbers allotted.
Is it beyond the capacity of the world’s leaders to devise a plan for sharing the acceptance of these people over several continents and countries? Safer places on board cost more; life vests were sold separately as extras, police said.
Meanwhile the medical charity MSF has said it is “very worried” by the situation in Kos where tensions are high between the authorities and the migrants and refugees.
The boat was carrying in total some 650 people. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered.
“Those who could not get out in time would have drowned almost immediately”, the organization said.
Survivors of a migrant boat that capsized off Libya as rescuers approached told investigators their smugglers used violence to keep people in the vessel’s hold, increasing fears that more than 200 died trapped inside, police in Sicily said Friday.
While noting that most drownings occurred before the European Border Agency’s Triton Operation began covering global waters, the IOM said the risks of new shipwrecks remained.
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More than 1,600 migrants have already been rescued by LÉ Niamh.
