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May 30, 2016

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‘Those below deck had no chance’

A WEEK of shipwrecks and death in the Mediterranean yesterday culminated in harrowing testimony from migrant survivors who said another 500 people, including 40 children, had drowned, bringing the number of feared dead to at least 700.

Brought to safety in the Italian ports of Taranto and Pozzallo, survivors told the UN’s refugee agency and Save the Children how their boat sank on Thursday morning after a high-seas drama which saw one woman decapitated.

“We’ll never know the exact number, we’ll never know their identity, but survivors tell that over 500 human beings died,” Carlotta Sami, a UNHCR spokeswoman, tweeted.

With some 100 people missing after a boat sank last Wednesday, and 45 bodies recovered from a wreck on Friday, the UNHCR said it feared up to 700 people had drowned in the Mediterranean last week.

Giovanna Di Benedetto, a Save the Children spokesman in Sicily, told reporters it was impossible to verify the numbers involved but survivors of Thursday’s wreck spoke of around 1,100 people setting out from Libya on Wednesday in two fishing boats and a dinghy.

“The first boat, carrying some 500 people, was reportedly towing the second, which was carrying another 500. But the second boat began to sink. Some people tried to swim to the first boat, others held onto the rope linking the vessels,” she said.

According to survivors, the first boat’s Sudanese captain cut the rope, which snapped back and decapitated a woman. The second boat quickly sank.

The captain was arrested on his arrival in Pozzallo along with three other suspected people traffickers, according to Italian media reports said.

“We tried everything to stop the water, to bail it out of the boat,” a Nigerian girl was quoted as saying by La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper.

“We used our hands, plastic glasses. For two hours we fought against the water but it was useless. It began to flood the boat, and those below deck had no chance. Woman, men, children, many children, were trapped, and drowned,” she said.

Those who survived said the dead included “around 40 children, including many newborns,” according to La Repubblica.

“I saw my mother and 11-year old sister die,” Kidane from Eritrea, 13, told aid workers. “There were bodies everywhere.”

A bout of good weather as summer arrives has kicked off a fresh stream of boats attempting to make the perilous crossing from Libya to Italy. Italian news agency Ansa said some 70 dinghies and 10 boats had set off over the past week.

Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said on Saturday that Europe needed “a quick agreement with Libya and African countries” to halt the crisis.

The chaos in the North African country since Moammar Gadhafi’s fall in 2011 has been exploited by people traffickers.

Migrants interviewed by La Repubblica in Sicily told the newspaper that a new “head trafficker” called Osama had taken control of departures from Libya and was offering “cut-price” deals to lure new customers.

“I was held captive for six months in a basement of an abandoned building in Sabratha. I saw many people executed, those who tried to escape were killed by the guards, who were all Libyans,” a Nigerian migrant told the newspaper.

Italy wants to persuade African countries to help close migrant routes to Europe and take back some of those arriving via Libya in exchange for increased aid and investment. However, Germany has made it clear it is against one of the plan’s elements: the issuing of EU-Africa bonds to finance it.




 

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