Drowned African-migrant victims of Mediterranean shipwreck died ‘locked in an embrace’
BY NICK SQUIRES, LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH OCTOBER 5, 2013
ROME — Italian divers have described the horror of seeing dozens of dead refugees trapped inside the hull of a fishing boat that sank off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, as the authorities said they planned to raise the wreck.
With the death toll from the worst disaster of its kind in the Mediterranean expected to exceed 300, survivors recounted the journeys they had to endure to reach the tiny island, trekking across the Sahara and being treated “like slaves” in Libya as they tried to scrabble together enough money for the crossing.
They described how an estimated 500 people were packed on board the 66-foot fishing vessel, as though it was a modern-day slave ship, with those in the hold having no chance of survival when the boat capsized half a mile off Lampedusa’s Rabbit Beach.
The boat sank in the early hours of Thursday after someone on board set fire to a blanket to attract attention from the Italian coast guard. The fire swiftly got out of control and hundreds of passengers rushed to one side of the vessel, causing it to capsize.
So far 111 bodies — among them children as young as three — have been recovered, but an estimated 230 people are missing and are believed to have drowned.
A team of divers, some of whom were involved in searching the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which sank off the Tuscan island of Giglio last year, have inspected the wreck of the boat, which set out from the Libyan port of Misurata.
“There were bodies everywhere, trapped inside the wreck, but also on top of it and around the boat,” said Simone D’Ippolito, who owns a diving business on Lampedusa.
“I saw at least 100 corpses. But what struck me most was that some of them were locked in an embrace — they were hugging each other as they exhaled their last breath. Nobody wants to die alone. I still can’t get the sight out of my head.”
He was first alerted to the disaster early on Thursday as he prepared to take tourists on a dive.
A boat crewed by a local man, Vito Fiorino, steamed into Lampedusa’s only port with dozens of traumatized migrants on board, most of them Eritrean and Somali. “Vito told me, ‘The sea is full of dead bodies. We’ve never seen anything like it. We saved 47 people but dozens of immigrants drowned — they didn’t know how to swim.’”
D’Ippolito jumped on to his dive boat with one of the tourists, a doctor, and headed out to where the migrant boat had capsized.
On the way they encountered a motor launch from the coast guard. “They told me to slow down because the sea was full of bodies,” the dive master said. “It was then that I understood that this was a tragedy without precedent.”
The scene that greeted them was “horrific.”
“Bodies were floating everywhere. Wherever I turned, there were bodies. I couldn’t properly manoeuvre the boat because of them.”
D’Ippolito dived into the water. “I couldn’t believe my eyes — down there, too, there were bodies everywhere, most of them of young men and women. I felt very sad but also very angry — how could a tragedy like this be allowed to happen?”
One of the 150 migrants to survive the sinking recounted how he left his native Eritrea a year ago. The 18-year-old, who gave his name as David, travelled overland from the east African country into neighbouring Sudan and then to Libya, a dangerous journey for which he had to pay traffickers $3,000.
“It took us two months to cross the desert. We first travelled by foot, then in a truck. Many times I thought I would never make it. We travelled at night. During the day, when we weren’t travelling, they tied us up.”
Once he reached Libya he had to work for months to scrape together the equivalent of 1,000 euros that people smugglers demand for the boat crossing.
“I worked for nearly a year to earn enough money for the crossing. I worked as a house painter and lived in a wooden shanty. The Libyans beat us all the time. They were like mafia — they treated me like a slave.”
His companion, who gave his name as Kijwa, said the Libyans were “bad people — we got many beatings.”
The survivors were accommodated in Lampedusa’s overcrowded refugee reception centre. It has 300 beds but is now packed with more than 1,000 people. The lack of space was so acute that some survivors bedded down in an old van. Others slept on bits of mattress outdoors.
Among the survivors were 40 unaccompanied minors, aged between 11 and 17.
After touring the centre with a parliamentary group on Saturday, Khalid Chaouki, a Moroccan-born Italian MP, said: “We found shameful conditions, which are not worthy of a civilized society.”
Most migrants who reach Lampedusa have no interest in remaining in Italy. Instead they want to head for Europe’s prosperous north, to Germany, Switzerland or Scandinavia.
A Tunisian man suspected of being a people smuggler and of having organized the sea passage is being questioned by police.
Khaled Bensalam, 35, claims he was another asylum seeker who had paid for a place on the boat, but the other passengers have said that he was the skipper.
Italy, along with neighbouring Malta, is demanding more help from the rest of the European Union in dealing with the tens of thousands of refugees who arrive on its shores each year.
They have requested a review of EU legislation which stipulates that asylum seekers must remain in the country where they first land, calling for a system whereby other nations take in the refugees.
Divers were not able to return to the wreck Saturday because of rough seas. A small flotilla of fishing boats dropped a wreath at the spot where the ship went down and sounded their horns in honour of the dead.
http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=9002763
Received on Mon Oct 07 2013 - 10:37:25 EDT