EUROPE-MIGRANTS/ITALY ARRESTS Italian police arrest 8 after 49 migrants die in Mediterranean

Record ID: 143525

  • Title: EUROPE-MIGRANTS/ITALY ARRESTS Italian police arrest 8 after 49 migrants die in Mediterranean
  • Date: 18th August 2015
  • Summary: CATANIA, ITALY (AUGUST 17, 2015) (REUTERS) VARIOUS U.N. CONTAINER CARRYING BODIES OF 49 MIGRANTS LOWERED FROM SHIP TO TRUCK
  • Embargoed: 2nd September 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAAYVDBBKC0S0IVBDESQB1TO7UF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Italian police said on Tuesday (August 18) they had arrested eight suspected human traffickers after 49 migrants were found suffocated in the hold of a packed fishing boat in the Mediterranean last weekend.
    The third mass fatality this month in the area's ongoing migrant crisis is believed to have been caused when the victims inhaled engine fumes after the boat began taking on water.
    The suspects are being held in jail on suspicion of homicide and favouring clandestine immigration, said prosecutor Michelangelo Patane speaking in Catania, Sicily.
    The eight are believed to have kicked the heads of migrants as they tried to get out of the boat's hold when "the air became unbreathable" with fumes from the motor, Patane said.
    In photographs released by the police the nationalities of those arrested were given as 4 Libyans, 3 Moroccans and one Syrian minor, whose photograph was not released.
    The victims and 312 survivors were brought to Catania on Monday. The bodies of the 49 were placed inside a United Nation's container onboard a Norwegian coast guard vessel and then lowered to shore when the ship arrived in Catania's port. The town's deputy mayor said the dead would be buried in the local cemetery once post-mortem examinations have finished.
    The Mediterranean has become the world's most deadly transit point for migrants and refugees. More than 2,300 have died this year compared with 3,279 deaths during the whole of 2014, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
    Human traffickers have increasingly taken advantage of chaos in Libya to charge desperate people thousands of dollars to make the crossing from north Africa to Europe in rickety boats.
    Some 2,000 migrants were saved at sea last week alone, and the Italian coast guard said on Tuesday another 116 had since been rescued from a sailing boat off Italy's southern tip.
    Last week, a large rubber dinghy sank in the Mediterranean, leaving up to 50 migrants unaccounted for. Earlier this month, around 200 were presumed killed when their boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
    Rescuers found one migrant dead during an operation to save a further 354 from a fishing boat in rough seas near the coast of the southwestern Calabria region on Sunday night.
    The two most recent rescues were carried out by Italian coast guard vessels alongside Croatian ships deployed under the European Union's Triton maritime rescue mission, which was expanded after up to 900 migrants died in April.
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