Off the wire
• "Affluenza" teen back in Texas after deportation from Mexico  • Roundup: More than half of Yemeni population faces food insecurity, UN agency says  • Italy's black economy equal to a third of GDP: research agency  • Brazil announces 20 bln USD in lines of credit to boost economy  • 1st LD Writethru: U.S. stocks tick up on upbeat earnings, oil recovery  • 1st LD Writethru: Gold futures fall slightly after U.S. Fed meeting  • 1st LD Writethru: U.S. dollar falls on downbeat data  • Zika virus spreading "explosively" in Americas, WHO head warns  • Newspaper investigation mitigates sexual violence allegations against asylum seekers  • Urgent: U.S. stocks tick up on upbeat earnings, oil recovery  
You are here: 　 Home

6 migrants dead, 411 rescued off Sicily: Italian coast guard

Xinhua, January 29, 2016 Adjust font size:

Six bodies were recovered off Sicily island on Thursday in a day-long rescue effort coordinated by the Italian coast guard which resulted in a rescue of a total of 411 migrants.

"We coordinated four operations from the early morning until evening. Unfortunately during the last one we recovered the bodies of six migrants," a source from the Italian coast guard told Xinhua late on Thursday.

A total of 74 migrants were traveling on a rubber boat which was found partly deflated in the last rescue operation, the source said.

"There were already people in the water and we managed to save almost all of them except for six who could not make it," he added.

The source said the exact cause of the deadly wreckage was unknown. "But all of these migrant boats travel in totally unsafe and overloaded conditions. It is obvious that accidents can happen every second, in fact it is almost unavoidable," he explained to Xinhua.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement published on its website last week that approximately 37,000 migrants and refugees had already arrived by sea in Italy and Greece in 2016, or close to 10 times the total in 2015 by the same date. Endit