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At least 62 Passengers Die in Shipwreck off Sicily Scores Dead in Shipwreck Off Sicily
(about 2 hours later)
ROME — At least 62 people died when a ship carrying African migrants toward Italy caught fire and sank early Thursday off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, spilling hundreds of passengers into the sea, Italian officials said. SIRACUSA, Italy — In one of the deadliest shipwrecks in recent memory, 94 migrants died on Thursday just off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, when their boat sank after a fire on board. More than 200 people were still missing, officials said.
Antonio Candela, the government’s health commissioner for Palermo, told Sky TG24 television that 62 bodies had been found and that search and rescue operations were continuing. The victims whose bodies have been retrieved so far were mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, Italian authorities said. At least four children died in the accident.
So far, 141 people have been rescued, but the boat is believed to have been carrying as many as 500 people. Italian TV footage showed the bodies lined up on the harbor, in dark green and black body bags. About 170 people have been rescued so far.
The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, said the dead included a child of about age 3 and a pregnant woman. The old wooden boat sailed f from Misurata, Libya, and was carrying about 500 immigrants when it sank just half a mile off one of Sicily’s most famous beaches. In the early hours of the morning, the vessel moved close to shore and passengers ignited a towel to signal their presence. Soon after, the boat was in flames, authorities said.
It is the second deadly ship incident this week. On Monday, 13 men drowned just a few meters from shore while trying to reach southern Sicily. Infrastructure and Transport Minister Maurizio Lupi said in a statement that search and rescue operations were continuing and the death toll was expected to rise.
Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland and is the frequent destination for smugglers’ boats. According to the International Organization for Migration, 25,000 people died in the Mediterranean in the last 20 years but only 2,000 in 2011 and 1,700 last year. In the first nine months of this year, 21,780 migrants reached Italian shores and around 4,000 of them were children, according to statistics released by Save the Children. Most of the minors are not accompanied.
“Italy and Europe cannot ignore such a constant flux of foreign minors arriving alone, without any adults to take care of them,” Raffaella Milano, director of the Italian program of Save the Children, said in a statement.
Mr. Lupi called the fight against people traffickers a “task which we have to take on and which the international community and the European Community have to take on as well.”