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| In this Monday, April 20, 2015, file photo, the Tunisian navigator Mohammed Ali Malek, and one of the survivors of the boat that overturned off the coast of Libya, waits to disembark from Italian Coast Guard ship Bruno Gregoretti, at Catania Harbor, Italy. The United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that more than 800 people were believed to have drowned in the weekend sinking of a boat packed with migrants trying to reach Europe, making it the deadliest such disaster in the Mediterranean. Prosecutors said that after ship captain Mohammed Ali Malek rammed a vessel, terrified migrants rushed around the overcrowded boat, which was already unbalanced from the collision. |
CATANIA, Sicily (AP) -- Rescue seemed so close at hand.
A
ship with experience plucking migrants from unseaworthy smuggler's
boats had arrived soon after the distress call went out. But then the
fishing trawler's navigator made a maneuver that would seal the fate of
the 850 people crammed inside: Instead of easing up alongside the
merchant ship, he rammed it.
Relief gave way
to panic. Terrified migrants rushed to one side, the trawler seized and
capsized. What might have been another rescue in a period of
unprecedented migrant crossings instead turned into a horrifying
statistic: The deadliest shipwreck ever in the Mediterranean Sea.
The
accounts of survivors who arrived early Tuesday in this Sicilian port
48 hours after the disaster offered new details of the tragedy. The
traumatized witnesses corroborated a death toll of at least 800, making
the capsizing "the deadliest incident in the Mediterranean that we have
ever recorded," the U.N. refugee agency said.
Just
28 migrants, all men and boys in their teens, survived. And despite the
enormous toll, only 24 bodies were recovered - frequently the case when
ships sink on the high seas, especially when most passengers are locked
below deck, as was the case Saturday night.
Aid
agencies were quick to issue another warning: At the current pace, 2015
is set to be the deadliest year on record for migrants making the
perilous crossing as they flee war, repression and poverty in the Middle
East and Africa. In April alone, 1,300 have died.
The
International Organization for Migration said the toll for the year
could top 30,000 - nearly 10 times the 2014 total of 3,279, itself a
record.
"We just want to make sure people
understand how much more ... rapid these deaths have been coming this
year," said Joel Millman, the IOM spokesman.
Italian
ships have rescued well over 10,000 people over the past two weeks, an
unprecedented number for such a short period, authorities say. The
rescues continued Tuesday, with another 112 migrants, all men, picked up
in a deflating rubber life raft in waters some 50 miles (70 kilometers)
north of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
On Tuesday, seamen who participated in saving survivors of the weekend capsizing told tales of near-miraculous rescue.
Among
the ships to arrive in the pre-dawn hours Sunday was the coast guard
ship Gregoretti, which dispatched medics in two dinghies. By then, the
trawler had already disappeared into the sea.
`'We
found, literally, a floating cemetery. Bodies were everywhere. With the
dinghies we had to literally slalom among the corpses," said Enrico
Vitello, a 22-year-old medic from the Order of Malta.
Hearing screams, they killed the engines and shined a spotlight, locating a migrant floating in the sea.
"We
got close by and rescued him," said Giuseppe Pomilla, a 30-year-old
medic. "He asked our names and where we were from. We told him we were
Italians and came to rescue him. He was so happy."
Soon after, a boy floating in the sea grabbed their attention.
"We
couldn't understand if he was alive or dead. He had his eyes wide open
looking at us. He was not blinking, not moving or talking. We only
realized he was alive when he grabbed us suddenly," Pomilla said.
When they took him on board, he "exploded in tears," the medic said.
Among
the survivors were two alleged smugglers, who were detained for
investigation of aiding and abetting illegal immigration. The Tunisian
navigator, identified as 27-year-old Mohammed Alì Malek, could also face
multiple counts of manslaughter and causing a shipwreck - the same
charges the captain of the capsized Concordia luxury cruise liner was
convicted of earlier this year.
Prosecutors
said that after the trawler's captain struck the Portuguese-flagged
container ship sent to rescue it, terrified migrants rushed to one side
of the overcrowded boat, which was already unbalanced from the
collision. The trawler pitched in the water before finally tipping over
and sinking.
Most on board were unable to
escape because they were locked below deck on the trawler's lower two
levels. Hundreds more were squeezed on the upper deck.
"The
survivors said that the person who was steering the boat, their
smuggler, was navigating badly, and he did a bad move that made it crash
against the bigger ship," UNHCR spokeswoman Carlotta Sami said in
Sicily. "This obviously created a problem because the people on the
lower decks couldn't get out and the boat destabilized, until it
capsized."
She praised the merchant ship, the
King Jacob, for its response, noting it had participated in previous
rescues. These included saving about 100 migrants, including children
and pregnant women, in the Strait of Sicily just five days earlier, ship
officials said.
The weekend deaths have
jolted the European Union onto emergency footing to combat the crisis,
with Italy demanding that it not be left alone to shoulder the burden of
rescues and that the EU focus on preventing boats from leaving Libya.
Combatting
the traffickers by arresting ringleaders and destroying their boats has
emerged as the centerpiece of a 10-point proposal to be discussed at an
emergency EU summit Thursday in Brussels. Italy has arrested more than
1,000 smugglers - most of them boat navigators, not the masterminds of
the smuggling operations - and says it needs help.
On
Monday, the Gregoretti brought the 24 bodies to Malta for burial,
before continuing to Sicily with 27 of the survivors. One survivor, a
32-year-old Bangladeshi, had been flown Sunday to Catania, his
statements giving authorities the first hint of the tragedy's scale.
The
remaining survivors were brought Tuesday to a migrant holding center in
Catania and were "very tired, very shocked, silent," according to
Flavio Di Giacomo of the IOM.
The survivors were all men, including four teenagers; Sami described them as "very confused, fragile and scared."
For
most, the ordeal began well before stepping aboard the doomed boat.
They included 350 Eritreans, many of them young men fleeing forced
conscription, as well as people from war-torn Syria and Somalia, in
addition to migrants from Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory
Coast and Ethiopia.
Prosecutors said Tuesday
that some had been held for as long as 30 days on a farm near where the
boat was docked before being transported in groups of about 30 in trucks
to the embarking point.
"In one instance, one
of the migrants was allegedly struck with a club because he stepped
away" to go to the bathroom, they said in a statement.
Save
the Children said witness statements indicated that 60 children and
adolescents were on board the ship, only four of whom survived. It said
if current trends continue, 2,500 children could die this year, calling
on European leaders to restart rescue operations.
The
children surviving the journeys are `'exhausted and traumatized not
only from the ordeal but also during their long and dangerous land
journeys," said Gemma Parkin, a Save the Children spokeswoman in Sicily.
"But they also tell us they are grateful to be alive and in a safe place - they know they are the lucky ones."
