Italy Aims to Resume Search for Bodies in Shipwreck Tragedy
Local Editor
Italian emergency services hoped to resume the search for bodies Saturday despite rough seas after the worst ever Mediterranean shipwreck tragedy, in which 111 African asylum-seekers are confirmed dead and around 200 more are still missing.
The search for bodies off the island of Lampedusa suspended Friday due to bad weather.
The government asked Europe to help stem the influx of migrants, as the country mourned the dead.
Islanders in the tiny fishing community held a mass and a silent torch-lit procession, as flags across Italy flew at half-mast Friday and schools marked a minute of silence.
"This is a really important ceremony for the victims and for us," said Michele Rossi, a local shopkeeper. "We are used to doing our best to save people but we have never seen anything like this."
Emergency services on the remote island -- Italy's southernmost point -- said they had recovered 111 bodies so far and rescued 155 survivors from a boat with an estimated 450 to 500 people on board.
Rescuers said strong currents around the island may have swept other bodies further out to sea but they were no longer able to leave the port because of strong winds and two-meter waves.
"There is horror down there. Dozens of corpses, maybe hundreds," Rocco Canell, who runs a local diving school and went down before the search was halted, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
The migrants, almost all Eritreans, departed from the Libyan port of Misrata and stopped to pick up more people in Zuwara, also in Libya.
They told rescuers they set fire to a blanket on board just off Lampedusa to signal to coast guards after their boat began taking on water.
The fire quickly spread on the 20-meter vessel, which capsized and sank in the early hours of Thursday morning just a few hundred meters from Lampedusa, as its terrified passengers jumped into waters covered in a slick of spilled fuel.
The boat's Tunisian skipper, already arrested in Italy in April for people trafficking and deported back to Tunisia, has been detained.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano appealed for increased European assistance in patrolling Italy's maritime border and more action in countries of origin in Africa to stem the flow of risky refugee crossings.
"Lampedusa is the new Checkpoint Charlie between the northern and southern hemispheres," Alfano said, referring to the famous crossing point between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.
The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, said: "After these deaths, we are expecting something to change. Things cannot stay the same.
"The future of Lampedusa is directly linked to policies on immigration and asylum," she said.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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