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| Dramatic footage emerged Tuesday May 5, 2015, filmed by a crew member, showing a Mediterranean Sea rescue of migrants on a sinking rubber boat desperately clambering up ropes and a ladder from the cargo ship Zeran that came to their aid on May 3, 2015, in the sea between Libya and Sicily. Five bodies were recovered and were brought ashore Tuesday along with the migrant survivors to the port in Catania, Sicily, Italy. |
CATANIA, Sicily
(AP) -- Young men piled over each other, some shimmying up ropes
dangling from the towering rescue ship and others falling into the
churning sea. Women and children were the last off the stricken dinghy
during a chaotic Mediterranean rescue in which at least five migrants
were crushed to death and more were feared drowned.
Dramatic
footage shot by a seaman aboard the Maltese freighter showed the
weekend rescue of more than 100 West Africans aboard the flimsy boat off
the coast of Libya. Survivors were brought Tuesday to the Sicilian port
of Catania.
The video, obtained by The
Associated Press, highlights the danger of marine rescue, where safety
and tragedy too often lie just moments apart. With tens of thousands
trying to cross the sea on small boats launched by human traffickers
from Libya - and hundreds dying in the attempt - the question of how
best to save migrants from drowning has taken center stage in Europe.
Crew
members interviewed by the AP said everyone aboard the cargo ship Zeran
had undergone rescue training. But while a previous rescue several
weeks ago happened calmly without any loss of life, on Sunday elation at
the prospect of being saved quickly turned to panic.
Unaware
that they would be thrown a ladder, frantic migrants trampled over one
another to reach the ropes that were meant to hold it in place, with
some dangling precariously as they clambered along the lines to reach
the tall freighter.
Some jumped or fell
overboard to catch lifesavers tossed into the water by crew members.
Others emptied jerry cans of gasoline to use as floats, as the dinghy -
already deflated at the front - began taking in water.
"Easy! Easy!" implored a crew member from Zeran's deck.
"There
was the big ship there and they threw down ropes," Astou Fall Dia, a 24
year-old migrant from Senegal, told the AP after disembarking from the
cargo ship.
"Someone grabbed onto the rope.
All the other people started pushing to try to save themselves but the
people started falling in the water."
Dia said
she survived because she stayed close to the dinghy, and because she
knew how to swim - unlike most of the migrants who come from poor
African countries.
Five bodies were recovered
from inside the dinghy, floating amid garbage and water that had seeped
in. A crew member said they died in the final rush to be rescued and the
Catania prosecutor's office said late Tuesday that a preliminary
investigation showed they were crushed to death.
At
least another five to nine people fell into the water and drowned, said
the seaman who shot the video, though one man floating away with the
current and clinging to a lifesaver was rescued by crew on a Zeran
lifeboat.
The seaman and other crew members spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Save
the Children, which interviewed the survivors upon their arrival, said
the migrants reported "dozens" of people died in the rescue 25 miles off
the Libyan coast.
The weekend saw a dramatic
increase in rescues as smugglers in Libya took advantage of calm seas
and warm weather to send thousands of would-be refugees out into the
Mediterranean in overloaded rubber boats and fishing vessels. The coast
guard reported that nearly 7,000 people were rescued in the three days
ending Sunday.
On Tuesday, the Italian Mission
to the United Nations tweeted that coast guard just rescued 300
migrants in the Mediterranean, 80 miles (130 kilometers) off the Italian
coast.
The latest deaths come on top of the
estimated 800 migrants who are believed to have drowned last month when
their boat capsized off Libya with hundreds of passengers locked in the
hold by smugglers. A few days earlier, some 400 people were feared
drowned in another capsizing.
After those
deaths, the European Union held an emergency summit and agreed to
contribute more boats and patrol aircraft to Mediterranean rescue
efforts.
Even with the increased EU response,
commercial cargo ships are increasingly being called on by Italy's coast
guard to respond to migrants in need, as required by the law of the
sea.
Catania prosecutor Giovanni Salvi
complained last month that the commercial crews sometimes aren't trained
or equipped to conduct rescues and that lives can be lost when migrants
suddenly rush to one side of their unseaworthy boats as they try to get
off.
Salvi later backtracked and praised the work and commitment of the commercial vessels.
But
when the coast guard rescues migrant boats, it usually sends out
inflatable speedboats and crews use loudspeakers to implore the
passengers in various languages to stay calm and in their place.
It
was clear from the footage obtained by the AP that either there was a
language barrier, or the migrants couldn't hear the crew's instructions
from high up on the deck - or both - in Sunday's rescue.
A
second dinghy, picked up by the Italian navy the same day, suffered no
casualties. Those migrants were later transferred to the Zeran.
Alpha
Sisse, a 17-year-old from Ivory Coast who was among those rescued from
the second boat, said he had talked to survivors from the stricken
vessel.
"At least five people drowned, more are missing," he said. "They say maybe 20 people died."
Sisse said he left Libya because of the growing danger from fighting there.
Asked where he hoped to go from here, Sisse said: "Anywhere there is work."
