| There are so many, it’s almost like this is a new edition of “The Marching Morons”. |
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on Sunday said survivors had reported that around 28 people were lost at sea on one boat, while three were said to be missing from the second, following stormy weather on Saturday.
Both flimsy iron boats are believed to have set off from Sfax in Tunisia on Thursday.
An investigation into the shipwrecks has been opened in Agrigento in Sicily.
On Sunday rescue teams were also preparing to pull about 20
The
The number of bodies recovered has increased, in particular on the so-called Tunisian route, which has become increasingly dangerous partly due to the type of boats used.
Sub-Saharan
| Dawn adds: |
"Ten bodies have been found over the past 48 hours by coasties units" north of Sfax in Tunisia’s centre-east, the national guard said in a statement.
Sfax court front man Faouzi Masmoudi said it had been informed of the discovery of "eight bodies, all apparently sub-Saharan Africans" and Sherlocks were working to identify them.
The dead
Italia’s coastguard released dramatic footage Sunday of the rescues, in which people could be seen carried high on the crests of vast waves, while a coastguard vessel soared and plunged nearby. While some people tried to climb onto the vessel as it rocked, others, wearing black rubber rings, clung desperately to one another in a human chain.
’CRIMINAL LUNATIC’
An investigation into the shipwrecks has been opened in Agrigento, on the nearby Italian island of Sicily. Agrigento’s chief of police Emanuele Ricifari said the traffickers would have known bad weather was forecast. "Whoever allowed them, or forced them, to leave with this sea is an unscrupulous criminal lunatic," he told Italian media. "Rough seas are forecast for the next few days. Let’s hope they stop. It’s sending them to slaughter with this sea," he said.
According to the North African country’s interior ministry, 901 bodies had been recovered this year by July 20 following maritime accidents in the Mediterranean Sea, and 34,290 others had been rescued or intercepted. Most of them came from sub-Saharan African countries, it said.
The distance between Sfax and Italia’s Lampedusa island is only about 130 kilometres.
Nearly 90,000
MEDITERRANEAN ROUTE
The central Mediterranean migrant crossing from North Africa to Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...is the world’s deadliest with more than 20,000 fatalities since 2014, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Crossing attempts have multiplied in March and April following an incendiary speech by President Kais Saied who had alleged that "hordes" of sub-Saharan
Xenophobic attacks targeting black African