More bodies found from Italy shipwreck

Bodies of another 83 migrants, who lost their lives in Thursday™s shipwreck off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa in Italy, have been recovered.

“We saw a lot of bodies piled up in every part of the ship. Wherever we looked, there were bodies,” said Antonio D’Amico, a police diver, on Sunday.

The recent findings bring the official death toll to 194.

More than 300 men, women and children either died or got lost when their boat sank. Most of the migrants on board the vessel were from Somalia and Eritrea, according to the United Nations.

“Every human life that we lose is a contribution that is lost. What happened should not happen anymore,” Italy’s Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge said during her visit on the island on Sunday.

Friday was declared a national day of mourning by the Italian government to mark the biggest migrant disaster in Italy’s history.

On Saturday, rescue operations for recovering more bodies were called off for another 24 hours because of bad weather.

Every year tens of thousands of people try to reach Europe in overcrowded, rickety boats, traveling in inhumane conditions.

In the last decade, more than 6,000 migrants have died in the Sicilian Channel. Even those who made it to Italy still remember their crossing with anguish.

Italy’s most southern ports have become the most accessible gateways to Europe for migrants from Africa and the Middle East who flee poverty and conflicts.

In a separate incident on Thursday, local media reported that nearly 200 migrants were escorted to the port of Syracuse on the island of Sicily when their vessel encountered difficulties five miles off the Italian coast.

In 2011, the island of Lampedusa alone received some 50,000 migrants during the uprisings in Tunisia and Libya.

Lampedusa is located between Sicily Island and the coasts of Tunisia and Libya. Over the past years, tens of thousands of migrants have arrived in unsafe and overcrowded vessels in search of a better life.

IA/HN

Copyright: Press TV