Submit your comments on this article |
Europe |
More than 2,000 boat migrants rescued off Italy, more deaths feared |
2016-05-28 |
[Al Ahram] More than 2,000 Around 14,000 people were taken off often flimsy vessels over the whole week, the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... and the coastguard said, and hundreds may have drowned, survivors and boat crews added, though there no official estimates of casualties. Italian Navy ship Vega plucked about 130 people off a "half-submerged" large rubber boat - one of 17 operations coordinated by the coastguard on Friday. There were no details on how many were on board before it deflated. The coastguard said the warmer weather and calmer seas had caused a surge in the number of people trying to cross from Libya, where people smugglers operate with relative impunity. Numbers managing to reach Italia were comparable to the same period last year and the year before. The They are piled onto flimsy rubber boats or old fishing vessels, and as dramatic images from the crew of the Italian Navy ship Bettica showed on Wednesday, they can be tossed into the water in a matter of seconds. The images show the moment a blue fishing boat capsized, sending hundreds of Testimony from survivors suggests there were still many people below deck who were not able to escape, according to the U.N. refugee agency, while the Bettica captain estimated that "some 100" may have been lost. |
Posted by:Fred |