Italy police arrest traffickers over refugee deaths

Survivors of the capsizing and sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants are brought aboard Irish and Italian Navy life-boats to the Dignity I MSF search and rescue vessel which responded to the emergency in the Mediterranean sea off Libya, Wednesday, August 5, 2015.

Italians officials say survivors recounted how the smugglers beat them to prevent them from moving and forced many into the hull. The EU has tripled resources for search and rescue missions, but prevention efforts are lagging.

Irish Defense Minister Simon Coveney said the 25 bodies recovered were also on board.

Other rescue ships from charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Italian Coast Guard also went to the scene.

Police said migrant accounts helped confirm preliminary estimates by rescuers that about 600 were on the 20-metre fishing boat.

Police said the five suspected smugglers – Libyan and Algerian men – were detained Thursday in Palermo as they disembarked, along with 362 survivors, from an Irish naval vessel. The boat sent out distress calls, one of which was picked up at Sicily.

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

This comes at a time when many European countries are struggling to decide what to do about increases in migrants seeking asylum from risky, unstable conditions in places like Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Shoulder to shoulder, feet to feet, in every nook and cranny, so much that when a rescue boat approached, people became anxious and excited and tipped the boat over so that it capsized.

In a joint statement released on Thursday, European Commission (EC) First Vice-President Frans Timmermans, High-Representative and Vice-President Federica Mogherini and Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said that “just one life lost is one too many”.

Migrants paid $1,200 to $1,800 each to cross the Mediterranean as they fled war, persecution and poverty.

This year, more than 2,000 migrants are believed to have died so far while trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

In Calais, nightly attempts by large groups of migrants to force their way through the rail tunnel linking France and Britain have provoked public anger and severely disrupted the flow of goods between the two countries.

In April, a 20-meter vessel capsized as it approached a merchant ship that had come to its assistance, and up to 900 people were killed in the deadliest shipwreck in the Mediterranean for decades.