Migrant boat breaks apart near southern Italy, leaving 45 dead
CTV
At least 45 migrants died when their wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart off southern Italy before dawn Sunday, the Italian coast guard and UN agencies said. Survivors indicated that dozens more could be missing from the boat that had set out from Turkey.
At least 45 migrants died when their wooden boat smashed into rocky reefs and broke apart off southern Italy before dawn Sunday, the Italian coast guard and UN agencies said. Survivors indicated that dozens more could be missing from the boat that had set out from Turkey.
The Italian Coast Guard said at least 80 people were found alive, "some of whom succeeded in reaching the shore after the shipwreck."
The precise numbers were hard to establish. A reporter for Italian RAI state TV, standing next to the wreckage on the beach, quoted local authorities as saying 60 bodies had been recovered. With his foot, he indicated a life preserver bearing the word "Smyrna," a Turkish port also known as Izmir.
Authorities said the cloth-covered bodies were brought to the sports stadium in the nearest city, Crotone.
More than 170 migrants were estimated to have been aboard the ship, two UN agencies, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, said in a joint statement that cited survivor accounts.
Among those aboard, there were "children and entire families," the UN statement, with most of the passengers coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia.
The boat collided with the reefs in violently rough seas, whipped up by powerful winds. Some of the wreckage ended up on a stretch of beach along Calabria's Ionian Sea coast, where splintered pieces of bright blue wood littered the sand like matchsticks.
