Italy May Have Found the Migrant Boat that Sank Last Month Killing Hundreds

ROME, May 7 (Reuters) – Italy’s navy stated on Thursday it believed it had discovered the wreck of a ship that sank final month killing as much as 900 migrants off the coast of Libya, the Mediterranean’s most threatening migrant tragedy in residing reminiscence.

Only 24 our bodies have been recovered for the reason that April 18 catastrophe and the invention of the wreck 375 metres (1,235 ft) underwater some 135 km (85 miles) north of Libya would notably enhance the possibilities of discovering extra stays.

Search groups based mostly on two minesweepers and a smaller navy vessel used sonar devices and a submersible to find the hulk of a 25-metre blue boat which fitted the outline of the one which sank, the navy stated in an announcement.

Asked if Italian authorities believed the migrant boat had now been discovered, a navy spokesman stated, “Yes … The location and length are correct, but we cannot be certain.”

Lawlessness in Libya, the place two rival governments are vying for management, has given virtually free rein to traffickers. Two survivors of the catastrophe have been arrested on the island of Sicily final month on suspicion of trafficking individuals on the ship.

After interviewing survivors, prosecutors concluded that greater than 750 individuals have been prone to have been aboard, many locked within the maintain. Other stories advised the dying toll could possibly be as much as 900. Twenty-eight individuals have been saved.

The scale of the catastrophe shocked the European Union into tripling funding for its sea patrol mission Triton, which changed Italy’s now-defunct, broader “Mare Nostrum” mission.

Some 51,000 migrants have reached Europe by sea this 12 months, 30,500 of them by way of Italy, in line with the U.N. refugee company, and calmer seas within the run-up to summer season have inspired hundreds to take the chance in current weeks.

About 1,800 persons are thought to have drowned within the Mediterranean to date in 2015. In the most recent recognized tragedy, members of a bunch of roughly 240 migrants who arrived in Sicily on Tuesday stated that they had been travelling with about 40 others who had drowned. (Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Mark Heinrich)