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Wreck of sunk boat in April migrant disaster located by Italian navy

Xinhua, May 8, 2015 Adjust font size:

Italian authorities said on Thursday they have found the wreck of the migrant boat that sunk last month off the Libyan coast causing the death of around 800 people.

The Italian navy said in a statement the 25-meter-long wreck of a blue-color fishing boat was located at a depth of about 375 meters nearly 160 km northeast of the Libyan coast.

Prosecutors in Sicily island, north of Libya, said later in the day that several corpses were localized and photographed by the Italian navy inside the wreck.

There was also some evident damage on the bow, probably deriving from the crash with the Portuguese merchant vessel which approached the migrant boat for rescue operations on April 18, they added.

Last month's disaster was the most ever serious in a countless series of deadly wreckages that according to the Refugee Agency of the United Nations (UNHCR) led to 3,500 African migrants losing their lives in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean last year.

Sources from the Italian Interior Ministry quoted by ANSA news agency on Thursday said that some 33,000 migrants have arrived in Italy so far in 2015, or 15 percent more than last year's arrivals in the same period.

This means that as many as 200,000 migrants could land in Italy for 2015 overall, well above last year's 170,000, further aggravating the emergency at the country's overcrowded refugee centers.

Italy's budget for migrant reception, which was around 630 million euros (709 million U.S. dollars) in 2014, is expected to also increase, the sources added.

Also on Thursday, Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told a foreign affairs committee hearing that his country was at work along with other European partners on drafting a legal framework to present to the UN for the demolition of boats used by human traffickers.

In fact according to witnesses' accounts, the migrants often suffer a heavy toll of violence before leaving Libya, where rampant political unrest has produced opportunities for traffickers, who take advantage of instability to make business out of migrants' despair.

Italian authorities have arrested more than 1,000 traffickers so far, of which the latest three earlier this week, after dozens of migrants were reported by NGO Save the Children to have drowned at sea in a fresh disaster.

The Italian government led by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has repeated called for focused actions in Libya to be carried out at the European level in the framework of international legality to contain the emergency of illegal immigration. Endit