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ITALY: Nearly 130 illegal immigrants killed in a shipwreck off Lampedusa

 

At least 130 bodies have been recovered, Thursday, October 3, after the sinking of a ship, loaded with 500 migrants on the outskirts of the island of Lampedusa, in Southern Italy, announced the mayor of Lampedusa, Giusy Nicolini. "It's a horror, a horror, they do not stop to make body," she reported crying at the Italian agency Ansa.

The tragedy shocked Italy. A national day of mourning Friday should be proclaimed at the Council of Ministers to be held today.

The boat was carrying between 400 and 500 migrants. Shortly after 11:30 (9:30 GMT), only 151 survivors had been brought ashore, lifeguards rescued by the Coast Guard, but also by fishing boats.

A rescue official confirmed to AFP that "migrants were still at sea." He also said that it could "not speak with certainty of sinking the boat in the direction of a boat would have failed." According to investigators, the passengers of the ship have set fire to blankets to signal their presence to merchant ships. Because of the fuel, the ship caught fire and sank.

The number of victims never ceasing to grow, the body which are for the moment on the dock Favarolo Lampedusa will be transferred to the airport hangar.

"A European drama"

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano, has appealed to the European Union (EU) with Italy after the sinking of migrants near the island of Lampedusa " , a European drama not only Italian. " According Angelino Alfano, who is also Minister of the Interior, the boat carrying "between 450 and 500" Somali and Eritrean migrants from Libya.

Monday, 13 immigrants - mostly Eritreans - drowned trying to reach the coast near Ragusa (south-east of the main island of Sicily ) after jumping or being thrown by a smuggling boat carrying about 200 migrants and refugees.

In early August, a similar tragedy occurred on a beach in Catania (eastern Sicily), when six Egyptians were drowned thinking be reached , land, while their boat was sanded not far from shore. 

Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,000 migrants have landed on the southern coast of the country (mainly Sicily and Calabria), nearly three times over the whole of 2012.

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