Pictured: The tiny sunken boat that carried 300 African migrants to their deaths after capsizing off the coast of Italy
- - Images show burned boat expected to contain over 100 bodies
- - Up to 300 migrants feared dead after the boat sank off Lampedusa
- - 111 bodies pulled from the water so far another 155 people are missing
- - Victims include two pregnant women and three young children
- - Disaster occurred when the boat's motor stopped working
- - A fire started to attract passing ships quickly spread across wooden vessel
- - Passengers moved to one side to avoid the blaze causing ship to capsize
- - Bodies fished from the water were laid out along the quayside
- - Divers battle choppy waters as they search for bodies of other victims
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These are the first pictures to emerge of the migrant boat that sank off of the Italian island of Lampedusa killing up to 300 people.
Italy's fire service has released video footage of divers reaching the wreckage of a boat which sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, 40 metres beneath the waves.
The diving team have said they expect to find the bodies of over 100 of the 155 people still missing following the tragedy.
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
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This is the underwater wreckage of the migrant boat which capsized off of Lampedusa today, killing up to 300 and leaving hundreds
more unaccounted for
A video released by the Italian 'Vigili del Fuoco' fire department shows the sunken boat resting on the bottom of the Mediterranean
Hauled to safety: Italian coast guards rescue one of the lucky survivors of the capsizing tragedy that is now believed to have claimed the lives of over 300 African asylum-seekers
Rescue: A survivor is thrown a lifebelt by a member of the Italian coastguard following the disaster off teh island of Lampedusa
Two African asylum-seekers swim towards a lifebelt with the island of Lampedusa in the background. The coastguard said that of more than 500 people believed to be on board the 20-metre boat, 159 had been rescued
The Tunisian captain accused of trafficking hundreds of migrants, who drowned when their boat sank off the coast of Sicily, had already been deported from Italy once, a senior government minister has revealed.
The boat claimed 111 lives when it caught fire and capsized, half a mile off the coast of Lampedusa, the southernmost tip of the EU. Another 155 people are still unaccounted for.
As dramatic pictures were released of passengers being hauled from the water, it emerged that one of the survivors was arrested yesterday having been identified as one of the traffickers.
Deputy Prime Minister Angelino Alfano said: ‘The trafficker arrested is a 35-year-old Tunisian who had been expelled from Italy in April and repatriated, But he’s returned to human-trafficking with these results.’
'There is no reason to think that what happened yesterday in Lampedusa is the last time,' he told parliament.
Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into multiple manslaughter, aiding illegal immigration and causing shipwreck.
Horrifying: Up to 300 African migrants are feared dead after their ship caught fire and capsized off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, spilling hundreds of passengers into the sea. Above, Italian rescue workers pull a dead body from the water
Recovery: Italy is holding a day of national mourning after the vessel caught fire and sank just south of Lampedusa yesterday
Fatal: At least 103 bodies have been pulled from the water so far - with another 200 people reported missing
Today 140 coffins arrived on the island, where scores of unidentified bodies were lined up in a makeshift morgue in an airport hangar.
Divers previously called off their search but have now reached to boat, though no more survivors are expected.
Harrowing accounts have emerged of rescuers’ attempts to pull the exhausted seafarers from the water.
A family of fishermen saved 18 people. Domenico Colapinto told how, after hours treading water, the migrants were too weak to save themselves. He said: ‘We had two ladders and lowered them shouting ‘Come up come up!’ No one moved.’
The picture-perfect island, part of Italy, but just 70 miles off the coast of Tunisia, has become the backdoor entry to Europe for thousands of migrants.
In the summer thousands make the perilous crossing, often on overcrowded and dangerous boats.
The collapse of the dictatorships in Libya and Tunisia brought an end to agreements that placed some controls on the exodus of ‘boat people’ from Africa.
Eighty per cent of those arriving on Italian shores plan to make a new life in the UK, British investigators estimate. Despite EU rules that forbid asylum seekers from leaving the country that they arrive in, twenty per cent eventually settle in the UK.
Safe: A young immigrant boy waves for the cameras as he and his mother wait to board a ship bound for Sicily today
Survivors: A group of immigrants is detained following their arrival in the temporary shelter in Lampedusa
Bodies: Bags containing the bodies of the drowned African migrants lie in a hangar at Lampedusa airport
Victims: Witnesses described the scene as 'a cemetery in the sea' as scores of lifeless bodies floated in waters off the Mediterranean
island
Origin: The migrants were from Eritrea, Ghana and Somalia, the coast guard said
Rescue attempts were hampered by an oil slick, the fisherman explained: ‘They were all covered in petrol. They slipped through our hands.
'I grabbed a woman but I couldn’t hold onto he
r. She fell in the water and I kept telling her "hold on hold on”.
He went on: ‘She looked at me and said nothing. She was exhausted. She couldn’t even stay afloat. I saw her go down like that without a sound, with those eyes that looked at me.’
His nephew Francesco Colapinto said he saw at least 20 migrants 'go down with their arms up, like statues.’
Hearses queue up near the port after arriving on Lampedusa with coffins for the victims
Two hearses disembark from a ferry on Lampedusa. Italy is holding a day of national mourning following the tragedy
Difficult: It is one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in recent times and the second one this week off Italy
Tragic: Bodies of drowned migrants are lined up in the port of Lampedusa this morning
Rising death toll: Military personnel bring bodies to the back of a waiting ambulance after they were pulled out of the Mediterranean
One woman, who was initially thought to be dead, was revived by medical personnel after she was brought back to the port.
Today, a rescue agency worker told BBC Radio 4 that the team did not expect to pull any more survivors from the water.
She added that many survivors had been coming off the rescue boats naked, looking shell-shocked at what they had seen.
Yesterday, Coastguard Commander Floriana Segreto said: 'Divers of the coastguard have found the boat on the sea floor at a depth of 40 metres (130ft). ... The divers have yet to go inside the boat.'
Now that the weather has improved rescue teams have access to the boat and plan on recovering more bodies.
Rescue operation: Emergency workers continue to add body bags to those already lined up on the harbour
Emergency situation: A coastguard vessel heads away from the harbour after unloading body bags containing African migrants who drowned in the tragedy
Soldiers from the Italian Army unload bodies on to the harbour today
'Once the fire started, there was a concern about the boat sinking and everyone moved to one side, causing the boat to go down,' Ms Segreto told a news conference.
The vessel sank no more than 1km (half a mile) from shore.
Bodies fished from the water were laid out along the quayside as the death toll rose in what looked like one of the worst disasters to hit the perilous route for migrants seeking to reach Europe from Africa.
'It's horrific, like a cemetery, they are still bringing them out,' Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini told reporters yesterday. Alfano said three children and two pregnant women were among the victims.
Statement: Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Angelino Alfano said the incident was a 'European drama, not an Italian drama'
Dangerous: Migrants frequently land on Lampedusa, just 113 km (70 miles) from the coast of Tunisia, often picked up at sea in
dangerously overcrowded boats by the Italian coastguard
Traumatised: A man is helped off the boat following the rescue
The disaster happened four days after 13 migrants drowned off eastern Sicily, and Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said action was needed by the European Union to stem 'a succession of massacres of innocent people'.
Last year, almost 500 people were reported dead or missing on the crossing from Tunisia to Italy, the U.N. refugee office UNHCR says. Syrians fleeing civil war have added to the numbers.
A fishing boat raised the alarm at around 7:20am (0520 GMT) yesterday and began pulling people out of the water before coastguard vessels arrived on the scene.
Tragedy: The ship apparently capsized, spilling the passengers into the sea near Conigli island
Between 450 and 500 people, most either Eritreans or Somalis, appeared to have been on board the boat, which had come from Misrata in Libya, Alfano said.
'If they had been able to use a telephone, they could have been saved,' he said.
The search for survivors and victims continued within a four nautical mile radius, in water around 30-45 metres deep.
Rescuers planned to extend the radius later in the day, in case bodies had been pulled away
by the tides, he said.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres praised the rescue effort, but said:
'I am dismayed at the rising global phenomenon of migrants and people fleeing conflict or persecution and perishing at sea.'
Spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration in Rome, Simona Moscarelli, said that the boat capsized after all the migrants moved to one side to escape the fire.
She told the BBC that only six of 100 women on board are thought to have survived.
Safe: A group of youngsters are brought safely to the shore after the tragedy off the Italian coast
Rescue: A woman receives assistance at the Palermo Civico hospital, Italy, after being rescued
Treatment: A man is carried off an ambulance to receive treatment
Desperate: Mayor Nicolini said the ship had caught fire after those on board set off flares so it would be seen by passing ships
Hunt: Coast guard ships and helicopters from across the region, as well as local fishing boats were on the scene trying to find survivors,
said Coast Guard spokesman Marco Di Milla
Shocked: Some of the immigrants after their rescue early this morning
Migrants frequently land on Lampedusa, just 113km (70 miles) from the coast of Tunisia, often picked up at sea in dangerously overcrowded boats by the Italian coastguard.
The small island has a population of between 4,500 and 5,000 people.
Pope Francis, who visited the island in July on his first papal trip outside Rome, said he felt 'great pain' for the 'many victims of the latest tragic shipwreck today off Lampedusa'.
'The word that comes to mind is 'shame',' Francis said in unscripted remarks after a speech in the Vatican. 'Let us unite our strengths so that such tragedies never happen again.'
The stream of migrants is a humanitarian and political problem for the Italian government.
Victims: 13 immigrants drowned off the coast of Sicily after their boat ran aground on Monday
Horror: Rescuers pause to pay their respects to the 13 victims of the tragedy
About 15,000 reached Italy and Malta - 13,200 and 1,800 respectively - by sea last year, the UNHCR says. Thousands more are believed to have arrived this year.
Calling the deaths of migrants 'an endless tragedy,' Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said: 'The rescue operation began immediately but it is getting more difficult because now the weather is getting colder, they don't know how to swim, they don't know where to go.'
Migrants who arrive in Italy are allowed to apply for asylum. Many of them are ordered to leave the country but often slip away to become illegal immigrants in Italy or elsewhere in the European Union.
Italy has pressed the European Union for more help to fight the crisis which it says concerns the whole bloc.
'This is not an Italian drama, this is a European drama,' Alfano said. 'Lampedusa has to be considered the frontier of Europe, not the frontier of Italy.'
In a separate incident today, around 200 migrants were reportedly escorted to the port of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, when their vessel encountered difficulties five miles off the coast.
Coastguards patrol the area where the boat capsized off the coast of Italy
It is the second fatal shipwreck this week in the area, following the death of 13 migrants who drowned off nearby Ragusa.
Over the past ten years, 6,200 migrants have died during the perilous crossing.
Ruthless human traffickers have been known to force migrants to jump into the sea, to be rescued by passing trawlers.
In this way they save on fuel and avoid the threat of the Italian authorities.
But fishermen have grown tired of abandoning their catch to ferry hundreds of people to shore.
During the summer, calm seas have seen the number of landings on Lampedusa soar, turning the island into an unofficial refugee camp.
Jezerca Tigani, of Amnesty International, said: ‘The waters around Lampedusa have again tragically become a graveyard for migrants.
‘These grim events keep repeating themselves as thousands of people make the perilous trip across the Mediterranean to seek a better life.’
Italian foreign minister Emma Bonino said there was ‘no miracle solution’ to the migration problem. The accident was ‘an infinite tragedy’, she added.
THE DESPERATE JOURNEY TO ITALY
Smugglers charge thousands of dollars a head to slip people into Europe aboard overcrowded, barely seaworthy fishing boats, providing no life vests or other safety features.
Sicily and the surrounding islands are hotspots for illegal immigrants arriving by sea from Tunisia, Libya and sub-Sahara Africa hoping for a better quality of life.
A growing number of Syrian immigrants have fled to the region hoping for protection from their civil war.
In August, six migrants died after they jumped out of a boat off the coast of Sicily.
In July, seven drowned after they tried to hold onto a fishing cage which was being towed to shore off the coast of Sicily.
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