ROME, 26 Feb: At least 43 migrants perished when their overcrowded wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs just off southern Italy at dawn Sunday, the Italian Coast Guard said.
\n\u201cAs of now, 80 persons were recovered alive \u2014 some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck \u2014 and 43 bodies were found along the shore,\u201d the Coast Guard statement said shortly before noon.
\nItalian Premier Giorgia Meloni said that the migrants were crowded into a 20-meter (66-foot) -long boat in \u201cadverse weather conditions.\u201d In a statement released by her office, she expressed \u201cher deep sorrow for the many human lives torn away by human traffickers.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s inhumane to exchange the live of men, women and children for the \u2018price\u2019 of a ticket paid by them in the false prospect for a safe voyage,\u201d said Meloni, a far-right-wing leader whose governing allies includes the anti-migrant League party.
\nShe vowed to use her leadership to press for crackdowns on departures arranged by human smugglers and to press fellow European Union leaders to help Italy in her quest.
\nA chunk of the boat, along with piles of splintered wood, littered the beach at Steccato di Cutro, part of Calabria\u2019s coastline along the Ionian sea. Some of the survivors tried to keep warm, wrapped in what appeared to be colorful blankets or sheets.
\nA helicopter and motorboats were deployed in search efforts, including vessels from state firefighters, border police and the coast guard.
\nA Coast Guard motorboat rescued two men suffering from hypothermia and recovered the body of a boy in the rough seas, it said in a statement. Firefighter boats, including rescue divers, recovered 28 bodies, including three pulled by a strong current far away from the wreckage.
\nThe Italian news agency AGI said that among the bodies was that of a baby a few months old.
\nPope Francis on Sunday lamented that children were among the shipwreck victims.
\nFrancis told the faithful in St. Peter\u2019s Square: \u201cI pray for each of them, for the missing and the other migrants who survived.\u201d The pontiff added he also was praying for the rescuers \u201cand for those who give welcome\u201d to the migrants.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an enormous tragedy,\u201d Crotone Mayor Vincenzo Voce told RAI state TV.
\n\u201cIn solidarity, the city will find places in the cemetery\u201d for the dead, Voce said.
\nDetails about the nationalities of the migrants were not immediately provided in the reports.
\nIt was also not clear where the boat had set out from, but migrant vessels arriving in Calabria usually depart from Turkish or Egyptian shores. Many of these boats, including sailboats, often reach remote stretches of Italy\u2019s long southern coastline unaided by the coast guard or humanitarian rescue vessels.
\nAnother sea route employed by traffickers, considered among the deadliest for migration, crosses the central Mediterranean Sea from Libya\u2019s coast, where migrants often endure brutal detention conditions for months, before they can board rubber dinghies or aging wooden fishing boats, toward Italian shores.
\nMost of the migrants departing from Libya are fleeing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa or in Asian countries including Bangladesh and Pakistan, not war or persecution, and risk having asylum bids denied by Italian authorities.
\nAnother heavily plied route by traffickers\u2019 boats begins on Tunisia\u2019s shores, with many of those boats reaching the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, or Sardinian beaches, often without need of rescue.
\nMeloni\u2019s government has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy\u2019s northern coasts, meaning the vessels need more time to return to the sea after bringing those rescued aboard, often hundreds of migrants, safely to shore. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROME, 26 Feb: At least 43 migrants perished when their overcrowded wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs just off southern Italy at dawn Sunday, the Italian Coast Guard said. \u201cAs of now, 80 persons were recovered alive \u2014 some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck \u2014 and 43 bodies were found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}