Italian prosecutors reported that suspected smugglers collected nearly $8,500 for each person who made the “voyage of death,” which killed at least 65 migrants from Turkey to Italy.
This same Tuesday, rescue teams pulled more corpses from the sea, reaching the aforementioned number of deaths, in the latest devastating migratory tragedy in Italy recorded last Sunday.
According to the AP agency, authorities delayed the scheduled viewing of the coffins to give more time to identify the bodies, as relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone hoping to find their loved ones, some of whom which came from Afghanistan.
“I am looking for my aunt and her three children,” Aladdin Mohibzada was quoted as saying by the agency, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up in a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old boy survived and was being held in a juvenile facility.
The Italian “trip of death”
At least 65 people were killed when their overcrowded wooden boat crashed into shoals just 100 yards off the coast of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in heavy seas.
Some eighty people reportedly survived, but many more than the reported 65 are feared dead, as survivors said the ship had carried around 170 people when it left Izmir, Turkey last week.
Many of the passengers came from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the number of victims to 65, according to police.
It is worth noting that the Meloni government, which won elections last year in part on promises to end migration, has focused on complicating the efforts of humanitarian ships to carry out multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them landing ports along along the coasts of northern Italy.
That means boats need more time to return to sea after bringing the migrants on board and bringing them safely to shore.
However, aid groups’ rescue ships do not normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the coast of Calabria in the Ionian Sea.
Also read:
Shipwreck off the coast of Italy leaves 60 immigrants dead: Mostly women and children
· Matteo Messina Denaro: The last leader of the “Cosa Nostra” is arrested after 30 years of persecution
· The right rises comfortably in elections in Italy, according to projections