|
 "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.
After the survivors disembarked, some were escorted back on board to
see if they could identify the dead children.
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.
The Phoenix was responding to a distress call for a boat carrying
about 500 people, he said. The coastguard picked up 381 on Thursday
morning, while an Italy navy ship took 101 from a large rubber boat,
and the MSF vessel Argos rescued 87, according to their Twitter
accounts.
Wednesday's tragedy occurred when the boat flipped over as the LE
Niamh approached, probably because desperate passengers surged to
one side as they spotted the ship.
"What happened here was because the boat was so overloaded, and the
conditions were such that the boat started taking on water and it
listed to one side, capsized and sank, all in the space of two
minutes," Irish Defence Minister Simon Coveney said on Irish state
radio RTE on Thursday.
The Irish ship is part of the European Union Triton mission, which
was expanded after up to 800 migrants drowned in a shipwreck in
April.
[to top of second column]
|
DEADLY BORDER AREA
The Mediterranean Sea is the world's most deadly border area for
migrants. More than 2,000 migrants and refugees have died so far
this year trying to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,279 during
the whole of last year, the International Organization for Migration
said on Tuesday.
People-smugglers, mostly based in Libya and charging thousands of
dollars for passage, have sent more than 90,000 migrants by sea to
Italy so far this year, the UN refugee agency says. Italy took in
170,000 in 2014.
This summer's mass arrivals in both Italy and Greece show the crisis
is worsening. Immigrants fleeing violence and poverty at home
continue to pour in from Africa and the Middle East.
Many of the newcomers look to move swiftly to wealthier northern
Europe, including to Britain from Calais, France.
In April, a 20-meter (66-foot) vessel capsized as it approached a
merchant ship that had come to its assistance, and up to 900 people
were killed. It was the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean for
decades and a symbol of Europe's long-running migrant crisis.
(Writing by Steve Scherer and Philip Pullella; additional reporting
by Conor Humphries in Dublin and Darrin Zammit Lupi aboard the
Phoenix; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
