40 Migrants Found Dead in Sea Rescue

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO AUG. 15, 2015

ROME — The crew of an Italian Navy ship that responded to a distress call on Saturday morning from a boat carrying hundreds of migrants discovered the bodies of more than 20 people piled on top of one another in the boat’s hold, Italian officials said. It was another ghastly reminder of the perils faced by migrants crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded and unsafe vessels.

By Saturday afternoon, the crew of the navy patrol ship Cigala Fulgosi had saved 312 people, including 45 women and three children, from the nearly 50-foot-long boat and had recovered eight bodies from the hold. But many more bodies remained below, Cmdr. Massimo Tozzi said in an interview from the ship.

“The bodies are massed on top of each other,” Commander Tozzi said. “It’s still difficult to know how many there are. Maybe 20, maybe more.”

RELATED COVERAGE



The migrants were apparently overcome by fuel fumes, and the bodies were immersed in water and fuel. “It seems like carbon monoxide poisoning,” he said. “At first glance, there were no visible wounds” or signs of drowning.

The heat wave that has persisted in the Mediterranean in recent weeks only made matters worse, Commander Tozzi added.

Some early accounts by news agencies said that the death toll was at least 40, citing a Twitter post by the Italian Navy.

A passenger on the rickety vessel sent a distress signal to a contact in Italy around 7 a.m., about five hours after the boat left the Libyan coast. The navy ship, which had been on patrol in the area for the past few days, responded to the emergency call.

When rescuers arrived, they found dozens of people from several countries, including Morocco, Ivory Coast, Syria and Libya, piled on top of each other, Commander Tozzi said. Few were wearing life jackets. The first migrants to be rescued told the Italians that some of the passengers had died, and a team was sent to check the hold.

Saturday’s episode was the latest in a series of recent disasters at sea involving desperate migrants willing to risk their lives on unseaworthy vessels for a chance to start a new life in Europe.

Tens of thousands of migrants fleeing strife, persecution, natural disasters, famine and economic hardship in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have crossed the Mediterranean this year, and thousands of others have died trying.

Most of the migrants coming to Italy cross the Channel of Sicily from Libya, where political instability has increased the pressure on Libyans and migrants passing through to flee aboard overcrowded boats.

About 2,300 migrants have died at sea this year trying to make the crossing, according to figures released Friday by the International Organization for Migration. So far this year, it said, an estimated 237,000 migrants and asylum seekers have arrived in Europe by sea. Rescues at sea are occurring at a “rate of over 1,000 migrants a day this summer off Italy and Greece,” the organization said, and “the number of arrivals has already surpassed the total arrivals in 2014.”

Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, told reporters at a news conference in Rome on Saturday that more than 103,000 migrants had crossed the Mediterranean into Italy in the first seven and a half months of this year, about 1,000 fewer than last year during the same period.

Mr. Alfano spoke with pride of the rescues at sea by Italy’s forces, noting that they had rescued more than 6,000 people in the past 45 days.

“We do our duty to save people and repatriate those who have no right to be here,” he said, according to a brief report of the news conference published on the Interior Ministry’s website.

He added that so far, 89,083 migrants had been given shelter, temporary or otherwise, in Italy.

Since November, a multinational operation coordinated by the European Union’s border patrol agency, Frontex, has sent vessels to patrol the central Mediterranean and to support Italian surveillance and rescue efforts. Tens of thousands of migrants have been rescued.

But disasters continue. Just 10 days ago, a fishing boat carrying as many as 600 passengers capsized off the coast of Libya, and about 200 people are presumed drowned.

Commander Tozzi said Saturday that passengers aboard the boat his crew had rescued were being questioned to determine whether there were smugglers among the migrants. The migrants and asylum seekers were waiting to be transferred to a Norwegian ship, he added. But he said he did not know where they would be taken.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/wo...ea-rescue.html