Five suspected traffickers arrested after boat wreck

The coastguard picked up 381 on Thursday morning, whereas an Italy navy ship took 101 from a big rubber boat, and the MSF vessel Argos rescued 87, in accordance with their Twitter accounts.

PALERMO, Sicily, August 6 (Reuters) – Hopes faded of finding more survivors on Thursday from a shipwreck in which 200 migrants are feared drowned, as rescue ships were called to the aid of more migrant boats in the same area of the Mediterranean.

The Irish naval vessel Le Niamh was one of several ships requested by the Italian coast guard to speed to the rescue of the overturned boat shortly before noon, Irish Capt. Donal Gallagher told the Associated Press.

Officers said some of the five smugglers, who were detained when they disembarked with survivors, were tasked with using violence if necessary to ensure the migrants did not move.

Six other survivors were taken by helicopter to hospitals, and 26 bodies have been recovered.

Some migrants who fell into the water had life vests; others, struggling to swim, were tossed life vests by rescuers.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the huge influx of migrants was too much for his debt-ravaged country and pleaded for EU help.

“All in all, there were no more than 50 people” in the water, Gil said.

The overcrowded vessel was believed to have had more than 600 migrants onboard when it began the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, before getting into trouble and overturning on Wednesday.

“It was a horrific sight”, said Juan Matias, coordinator of Doctors without Borders who was on the ship Dignity I, which also came to the assistance of the refugees. “They lost their children, they couldn’t find them” in the seas, Giovanna Di Benedetto, a spokeswoman for the organization Save the Children, told Italian state TV on Palermo’s pier.

More than 200,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to get to Europe this summer, and even those who have survived shipwrecks say the chance to emigrate is worth the risk.

But when they arrive on Greek islands facing Turkey there is usually nothing for them and most are forced to sleep outdoors, relying on volunteers for food and water, said Vincent Cochetel, head of UNHCR’s Europe division.

The Niamh had answered the migrant boat’s distress call on Thursday, stopping about a nautical mile away to launch its rescue vessels.

The incident is the biggest single catastrophe since April, when over 1,000 migrants died in the Mediterranean in a single week. “We estimate that half of the people, more or less, are still underwater over there”.

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.

“If you are in the floor downstairs, it is impossible to go out if the boat capsizes”.