Date: Wednesday, 18 January 2017
http://www6.ansa.it/ansamed/en/news/sections/generalnews/2017/01/17/four-survivors-say-195-were-aboard-sunken-migrant-boat_74d56609-8908-4e0c-a6e9-614538b5486f.html Four survivors say 195 were aboard sunken migrant boat Survivors of January 13 shipwreck only ones to reach Trapani 18 JANUARY, 2017 PALERMO - A team of psychologists and cultural mediators from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have provided assistance to a woman and three men from Ethiopia and Eritrea who were the only four migrants to survive a boat sinking that killed about 180 people on January 13 off the coast of Libya. The migrants arrived in Trapani on Monday evening aboard the Norwegian commercial vessel Siem Pilot, which was carrying 34 other people rescued during another operation as well as four dead bodies. The survivors said their boat had about 195 people aboard when both of its engines broke and it began to take on water before sinking entirely. One of the survivors said they were in the sea for more than 11 hours before help arrived. Andrea Ciocca, who coordinates the MSF emergency psychological team in Trapani, said when his team arrived at the port, the migrants they assisted "were in shock from the horrible experience they had survived". "One man lost his wife in the shipwreck, without even being able to recover her body," Ciocca said. "The hundreds of stories that we've heard in recent months during psychological assistance upon arrival at port are ones of desperation, of shattered families and lives, but we'll never get used to this enormous suffering," he said. Already 219 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean since the start of 2017. In 2016, thus far the most lethal year in the central Mediterranean, more than 5,000 died at sea.
