Italian divers on Tuesday recovered the bodies of more migrants from the wreck of a smugglers’ ship that sank off the tiny island of Lampedusa, raising the death toll to 275, Associated Press reports.
Coast Guard Commander Filippo Marini said 43 bodies were recovered from within the ship’s hold, while one was spotted by a helicopter floating near the wreck, before the operation was suspended for darkness.
Just 155 migrants, most if not all from Eritrea, survived Thursday’s shipwreck. Survivors said there were some 500 would-be asylum seekers aboard when the ship capsized and sank in sight of land.
A disproportionate number of the dead are women: So far, the bodies of 81 women have been recovered while only six of the survivors were female. Eight of the dead are children.
“Inside, we’re finding more women than men,” Gianni Dessi, the coast guard official coordinating the diving operation, told Sky TG24. “We hope not, but we expect to find more children.”
He said the scene inside the ship’s hold is tough for divers, but that “maintaining cold blood is a quality that helps the operation.”
The survivors were helping with the identification of the bodies, mostly through photographs. In some cases, divers also have recovered documents.
Thursday’s shipwreck has one of the highest verified death tolls among migrant ship disasters in the Mediterranean Sea. Humanitarian organizations have had reports of large numbers of migrants being lost at sea, including one boat with 300 that disappeared in 2011, but the bodies in such cases are never recovered.
AP
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