6 migrants die in Italy shipwreck
Print Edition
Italian coast guard yesterday found the bodies of six clandestine migrants on a tourist beach in Sicily, while nearly 100 others — thought to be Syrians and Egyptians — were rescued in the latest desperate attempt to reach Europe.
Port authority spokesman Roberto D’Arrigo said officials were alerted just after 5:30am that a boat had run aground across from a beach resort near the island’s second largest city Catania.
“Most of the migrants jumped into the water” when they saw the coastline, D’Arrigo said.
The bodies of two of the migrants were found on the beach while “four other bodies were recovered” by rescuers around the boat, as they apparently did not know how to swim and drowned, authorities said.
A three-year-old child suffering from dehydration and a pregnant woman have been hospitalized.
D’Arrigo said the migrants were young adults and one of the dead was a teenager.
Most of the passengers were on the shore when authorities arrived at the scene, he said, indicating that “91 Syrians and Egyptians” had been saved.
Earlier investigators had said the 18-meter-long boat was carrying around 120 people.
Dario Monteforte, owner of the Lido Verde which alerted authorities, told Sky TG24 television that he “saw a crowd of youths on the beach running toward the road.”
“Something has to be done,” said Monteforte, who was visibly shaken, and closed his establishment for the weekend.
“This is really an unending tragedy,” he said of the plight of thousands of migrants in rickety boats who seek to reach Italian shores each year.
According to D’Arrigo, it was “totally unusual” for migrants to land in Catania as “normally they arrive further south in Syracuse,” or else at the extreme southern point of Sicily or the island of Lampedusa.
A group of about 100 migrants, mostly Syrian families, were rescued overnight Wednesday off the coast of Calabria, on the Italian mainland.
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