http://www.voanews.com/content/italian-navy-recovers-migrant-shipwreck/3396751.html
Italian Navy Recovers Migrant Shipwreck
VOA News
June 29, 2016 7:28 AM
The Italian navy Wednesday was raising the wreckage of a boat, believed to have carried at least 700 African migrants, which sank in April 2015.
The navy has recovered more than 100 bodies so far, but many more, including those of women and children, are believed to be
locked below deck.
A refrigerated transport structure is being used so that scientists may try to identify the bodies of victims.
The boat capsized 193 kilometers south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on April 18, 2015, when it is believed migrants moved to one side of the vessel as a merchant ship approached.
Only 28 people are believed to have survived the wreck last year, causing public outrage and forcing the European Union to support more search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean.
Italian officials said they rescued 7,000 migrants from small boats just last week.
More than 200,000 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea and 2,888 have died in 2016, according to the International Organization for Migration. Most of the migrants arriving by sea are from Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, and Gambia. Although many asylum seekers and refugees in Europe are from Syria and Afghanistan, they are more likely to make the trek on land through Turkey.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/italian-navy-salvages-wreck-of-sunken-migrant-boat-near-libya-1467199473
Italian Navy Salvages Wreck of Sunken Migrant Boat Near Libya
Boat sank in April last year in deadliest single accident in Mediterranean migrant crisis
By MANUELA MESCO
June 29, 2016 7:24 a.m. ET
An Italian naval operation is under way to recover the wreck of a vessel that sank off the Libyan coast with the loss of the lives of around 700 migrants in the single most deadly accident at sea in the long-running Mediterranean migrant crisis.
Naval engineers attached salvage equipment to bring the sunken boat to the surface two days ago, with the aim of taking the vessel to a makeshift refrigerated facility in the Sicilian town of Augusta, the Italian Navy said on Wednesday. The navy plans to release more details of the operation on Thursday.
Searchers found only 169 corpses at sea out of the nearly 700 people that the Italian navy believes died in the disaster. Hundreds of people were locked inside by smugglers and were trapped below deck as it sank into the sea, according a report by one of the survivors made to Italian investigators.
The April 18 shipwreck last year is just one of many accidents involving migrants trying to reach Italy from war-torn Libya across one of the most dangerous routes for seaborne migrants and refugees.
About 2,500 people have died this year so far in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea, mostly from Libya, according to the International Organization For Migration. Nearly 62,800 migrants have reached Italy in the same period of time.
The route from Libya to Italy was overshadowed last summer by the surge in migrants trying to reach Europe by crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands, but the shipwrecks of this year have refocused attention on the southern Mediterranean route. The greater distance and bigger boats have made the Libya-to-Italy route deadlier.
The wreck of the sunken vessel—a 25-meter-long blue boat—was found in May last year by the Italian Navy, about 85 miles northeast off the Libyan coast, at a depth of 375 meters.
The Italian government promised to recover the bodies and give them a proper burial.
The aim of the recovery mission was also to identify as many people as possible by creating a European-wide database of information. This will include DNA data taken from the bodies recovered from the wreck of the ship.
Cristina Cattaneo, one of the forensic experts involved in the operation to identify the dead migrants, said that taking DNA samples is just one step and other factors, such as the condition of the bodies, remain important.
Even if the victims are identified, tracing their nearest relatives could be difficult, aid workers said. Some may have given up hope of finding lost family members or might not even have been aware that they were making the voyage.
Received on Wed Jun 29 2016 - 10:31:41 EDT