Mostrando postagens com marcador Lampedusa. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Lampedusa. Mostrar todas as postagens

quinta-feira, 3 de outubro de 2013

Informação demais faz mal à saúde ! BBC News - Italy boat sinking: Hundreds feared dead off Lampedusa

BBC News - Italy boat sinking: Hundreds feared dead off Lampedusa

Italy boat sinking: Hundreds feared dead off Lampedusa


The BBC's Alan Johnston: "More survivors, but dozens of bodies too"

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At least 130 African migrants have died and many more are missing after a boat carrying them to Europe sank off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.
A total of 103 bodies have been recovered and more have been found inside the wreck, coast guards say.
Passengers reportedly threw themselves into the sea when a fire broke out on board. More than 150 of the migrants have been rescued.
Most of those on board were from Eritrea and Somalia, said the UN.
The boat was believed to have been carrying up to 500 people at the time and some 200 of them are unaccounted for.

Analysis

This marked a tragic end to a long journey from countries as far as Eritrea and Somalia.
Over the years there have been numerous disasters involving migrants off Lampedusa, but seldom on anything like this scale. The island's mayor wept as she took in the scene on the harbour wall.
Furious demands are being made for an end to the dangerous trafficking of people across the Mediterranean. But it is hard to see how the flow could be curbed, with so many people so desperate for a chance to make a new life in Europe, and traffickers in so many ports ready to take their money.
Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the ship had come from Misrata in Libya and began taking on water when its motor stopped working.
It is thought that some of those on board set fire to a piece of material to try to attract the attention of passing ships, only to have the fire spread to the rest of the boat.
Simona Moscarelli, a spokeswoman from the International Organization for Migration in Rome, told the BBC that in order to escape the fire, "the migrants moved, all of them, to one side of the boat which capsized".
She estimated that only six of about 100 women on board survived, adding that most of the migrants were unable to swim.
"Only the strongest survived," she said.
It is one of the worst such disasters to occur off the Italian coast in recent years; Prime Minister Enrico Letta tweeted that it was "an immense tragedy". The government has declared a day of national mourning on Friday.
"There is no miraculous solution to the migrant exodus issue," said Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "If there were we would have found it and put it into action."

Start Quote

Without the necessary paperwork, the only way for migrants to get to Europe is to put themselves in the hands of criminal gangs”
In a separate incident on Thursday, local media reported that around 200 migrants were escorted to the port of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, when their vessel encountered difficulties five miles off the coast.
Earlier this week, 13 migrants drowned while trying to reach Sicily.
'Continuous horror'
Footage from Lampedusa showed bodies being laid out on the dockside.
The mayor, Giusi Nicolini, described the scene as a "continuous horror".
"It's horrific, like a cemetery, they are still bringing them out," she said, according to Reuters.
Rescued migrants arrive onboard a coastguard vessel at the harbour of LampedusaMore than 140 people have been rescued from the shipwreck, officials say
This picture grabbed on a video released by the Guardia Costiera on October 3, 2013 shows some of the immigrants after their rescue near LampedusaThe vessel reportedly capsized after a fire on board
Survivors of a ship carrying migrants which caught fire and sank off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa are seen aboard an Italian Coast Guard vesselThere are believed to have been around 500 people on board the vessel
Body bags containing African migrants, who drowned trying to reach Italian shores, lie in the harbour of LampedusaThe bodies of the victims were lined up at Lampedusa dockside