ITALY: Over 60 illegal immigrants from Africa have perished during an apparently horrific 16-day voyage as they tried to get to Europe.
Italian coastguards said yesterday they had found the bodies of 13 people aboard a small boat off southern Italy. Survivors said that at least 50 more corpses were dumped at sea during the voyage.
A spokesman for the coastguards said 15 illegal immigrants, all believed to come from Somalia, were plucked alive late on Sunday from a vessel drifting in international waters southeast of the remote Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.
The gaunt Africans, huddled in blankets, told their rescuers that at least 80 people had boarded the boat on the north African coastline on October 3rd and that most of them had died at sea of hunger and cold during their nightmarish odyssey.
"No captain travelled with them and they lost their way," the coastguard spokesman said, adding that under normal circumstances it can take less than a day to reach Lampedusa from nearby Tunisia and Libya.
The journey turned into a nightmare when the 12-metre boat's engines stopped functioning, leaving the vessel stranded some 50 nautical miles off the nearest Italian coast.
"At the beginning they threw the bodies in the water, but then they didn't even have the strength to do that," he said.
Italian Interior Minister Mr Giuseppe Pisanu called it a "human tragedy that weighed, above all, on Europe's civil conscience". He said African states should do more to halt desperate migrants leaving in search of a better life in the West.
It was the second tragedy involving illegal immigrants off Lampedusa within three days. On Friday, seven Africans, including three children, died before their boat could reach the remote island. Coastguards on Sunday found bodies stuffed inside the boat's engine room and under the deck. Emaciated survivors were whisked to Lampedusa aboard a coastguard launch.
Another launch towed the stricken boat to port with all the remaining corpses still aboard. Once they docked shortly after dawn yesterday, rescuers found one woman still alive.
"She was lying among the bodies and seemed lifeless. It was only after they got to Lampedusa that they saw her move," said the coastguard spokesman. She was treated in hospital.