Italy arrests 5 males over Libya migrant shipwreck

Hopes pale of discovering extra survivors on Thursday from a shipwreck through which 200 migrants are feared drowned, as rescue ships have been referred to as to assistance from extra migrant boats in the identical space of the Mediterranean.

About 800 of the thousands of people who had to evacuate from a huge and fierce Northern California wildfire have been allowed to return, but for some the relief quickly turned to grief when they found only…

A packed fishing boat capsized in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, plunging the more than 600 migrants onboard into the sea.

Italian police officers take in custody Imad Busadia, center, one of the five alleged smugglers who were detained on Thursday when they disembarked in Sicily from an Irish Navy vessel with surviving migrants of the capsizing of a fishing boat, in Palermo, Italy, Friday, August 7, 2015.

The five “allegedly caused the ascertained deaths of 26 people and the presumed deaths of about 200, who, according to what witnesses say, were closed inside the boat which overturned”, police added, estimating a total of 650 migrants had been aboard the boat.

They are accused of murdering at least 26 people – including 3 children – whose bodies were recovered by the rescue boats.

The worldwide Organization for Migration said survivors told its staff that up to 250 people had been forced to sit in the hold – “the most unsafe part of the ship”.

When water started seeping in, “the migrants, on the traffickers’ orders, tried desperately to eliminate it”, the police stated in a press release.

“Those who could not get out in time would have drowned nearly immediately”, it said.

An Italian military helicopter was lowering life rafts.

The Italian police told AFP that each of the accused had their own role in the voyage, with one in charge and others responsible for subduing the migrants. Safer places on board cost more; life vests were sold separately as extras, police said.

The truly horrific details of some the migrants emerged today as many told police and the life-saving crews of the LE Niamh that they were stabbed and attacked during the perilous journey.

The capsizing would be the second deadliest tragedy off Libya this year.

Many migrants can not swim, making it a race against time for rescue workers trying to pull them from the water.

Last month, a small vessel carrying asylum seekers from Vietnam was intercepted off Australia’s remote west coast, the first boat carrying would-be refugees spotted that close to shore in two years. Italy took in 170,000 in 2014.