DPA
Rome

Survivors of a boat wreck who were taken to safety in Italy told aid workers that about 40 migrants on board died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean, Save the Children said yesterday.
The charity group listened to their accounts in Catania, a port in eastern Sicily, where 194 migrants rescued at sea disembarked from a container ship.
Five bodies were also brought to shore.
Spokeswoman Giovanna Di Benedetto told DPA by phone from the port that the migrants’ boat reportedly ran into difficulties and that the death toll was feared to be much higher.
“Survivors told us that dozens of migrants fell into the sea, maybe around 40. There is no confirmation of this number,” Di Benedetto said. “Apparently there was an accident on board. Maybe there was an explosion aboard their rubber dinghy, but it is not for sure.”
Catania prosecutors have opened an investigation into the accident.
More than 800 migrants are believed to have drowned off the Libyan coast in mid-April, in what has been described as the worst such tragedy in recent times.
Only 24 bodies were found.
Following that shipwreck, European Union leaders agreed to treble funding for the bloc’s Mediterranean sea patrols and drive plans forward for possible military action against smuggling networks.
But such plans have yet to be made concrete.
The exact number of casualties from Mediterranean shipwrecks is often unknown, because bodies lost at sea cannot be recovered.
The Mediterranean is considered to be the world’s most-dangerous sea migration route.
One of every 23 migrants who set sail from North Africa between January and March perished in the crossing, an April report from Amnesty International calculated.
The Italian navy said that it rescued 606 people overnight, while more than 1,200 migrants were disembarked in ports other than Catania, including in a private rescue ship run by the Doctors without Borders (MSF, Medicins Sans Frontieres) aid group and MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), a Maltese organisation.
In Salerno, 60km south of Naples, nine pregnant women arrived as part of a group of 652 would-be asylum seekers from Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Gambia, many of who were diagnosed with scabies.



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