Mediterranean migrant crisis: Hundreds feared drowned off Libya after fishing

Flower-topped coffins containing the bodies of the recovered dead were loaded into black funeral vans.

The fishing boat sent a distress call about 15 nautical miles north of Libya and capsized on 5 August when the Niamh got closer to the area, as migrants on the overcrowded vessel rushed to one side.

Another boat Dignity1, run by the charity MSF (Medecins sans Frontiers or Doctors Without Borders), was the second vessel on site and also helped rescue people from the water. With seas warm and calm, rescuers expressed hopes others might be alive.

One was a man with a fractured leg and the other was a mother, with a one-year-old son, who needed dialysis.

Irish sailors inflated four life rafts and threw hundreds of life jackets to the struggling migrants in the water, pulling as many of them to safety as they could.

“Unfortunately, we have a system where refugees in neighbouring countries they first fled to are not being assisted to the level we would like to see them assisted”.

The Irish vessel was expected to reach Sicily later Thursday with most of the survivors.

Police say migrants were beaten and stabbed during the voyage, with many locked in the hold.

Police arrested the men after speaking to survivors during the night after they arrived in Palermo.

Six people were airlifted to the Italian island of Lampedusa for emergency medical treatment, a spokesman for UNHCR, the UN’s relief agency, said.

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… Eritreans make up 12 per cent of those landing on Europe’s shores, followed by Afghans at 11 per cent, Nigerians at five per cent and Somalis at four per cent, he said.

Two Libyans, two Algerians and a Tunisian, ranging in age from 21 to 24, were placed under formal arrest on Friday in Palermo after being questioned on Thursday. “We estimate that half of the people, more or less, are still underwater over there”.

Some information from the Associated Press.

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Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had promised to give those who died a decent burial, and so far 58 bodies have been recovered from around the wreck, which is lying on the sea-bed some 380 metres below the surface. One survivor, without a life vest, was spotted floating on his back.

All the nationalities of the survivors weren’t instantly out there.

Several Syrians were among those rescued on Thursday, including a pregnant woman who at first appeared in danger of miscarriage.

Rescuers believe at least 100 people who were trapped in the hold when the boat capsized would have drowned immediately.

The Mediterranean Sea has become the world’s most deadly border area for migrants.