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Europe
More than 2,000 boat migrants rescued off Italy, more deaths feared
2016-05-28
[Al Ahram] More than 2,000 migrants colonists were rescued from boats in the Mediterranean on Friday, Italia's coastguard said, as numbers soared for the third year running in the build up to summer.

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 migrants colonists - many of whom do not know how to swim and do not have life jackets - pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to make the crossing.

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 migrants colonists tumbling into the sea. About 240 women and kiddies had already been rescued, but an unknown number were trapped in the hull. Only five bodies were recovered and 562 were saved.

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