To respect 49 dead migrants, Sicilian city cancels fireworks

Deputy Mayor of Catania Marco Consoli told the AP on Monday that the show would be canceled out of respect for the dead and that a white balloon would be released for each of the victims instead.

The 49 casualties suffocated after being overcome by fuel fumes in the water-logged hold of the smuggling boat in which they were riding. The burials will be in Catania’s cemetery. A crane was being deployed to transfer a container holding the dead on to a truck for transport to a morgue.

Another 103 migrants were also aboard the Norwegian ship that had been rescued by a German vessel after they set off from Libya in a rubber dinghy.

Among them were 354 people, including dozens of women and children, and one corpse deposited by a Croatian patrol boat at Reggio Calabria on the toe of the Italian mainland, the coastguard said. Rough seas complicated rescuers’ work.

Hundreds of other migrants rescued at the weekend were disembarking at other ports across southern Italy yesterday.

Macedonia is a major transit route for migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa heading from Greece to more prosperous EU countries.

Earlier this week, there have been some 7,000 refugees and migrants on Kos, however that quantity has fallen to some 2,500, based on Greek police, with those that have registered travelling on to Athens.

The migrant died on Monday while being transported to a hospital in the capital, Skopje, becoming the 29th person to die on train tracks in nearly two years.

The alleged traffickers were three Moroccans, including the 20-year-old captain of the ill-fated vessel, four Libyans and a 17-year-old Syrian.