LAMPEDUSA, Italy: Italy denied accusations yesterday that rescue efforts were delayed in a shipwreck tragedy in which 300 African migrants are feared dead, as EU states eyed talks on the refugee crisis next week.
Rough seas around the island of Lampedusa have suspended the search, and controversy has erupted over possible delays in the rescue and unsanitary conditions in which child survivors are living.
The coast guard said it only took 20 minutes to reach the scene of the disaster near the shore after being alerted and not 45 minutes or an hour as claimed by some people who rushed to help.
It also rejected charges of having prevented private boats from joining the rescue once emergency services were in place, with spokesman Filippo Marini dismissing the claims as “stupid”.
But Marcello Nizza, a tourist who was out fishing that night and said he was the first on the scene, said: “I could have saved more if help had come in time and if they had allowed us to go out again.”
There were also questions about why radars failed to spot the boat, as dramatic amateur video footage emerged showing a young Eritrean man being hauled aboard a private boat in the chaotic rescue.
“You have to search or 480 people are going to die!” he is heard saying in the video released by Italian TG2 news, before bursting into tears and spitting out sea water, exclaiming “Oh my God!”
Emergency workers have recovered 111 bodies so far and plucked 155 survivors from the sea.
They said some of the bodies may have been swept out to sea by strong currents and forever lost.
It is feared the toll could rise to 300 or more, which would make this the worst ever Mediterranean refugee tragedy after a previous one in 1996, also off Italian shores, claimed 283 lives. “We have a legal but also a moral responsibility to recover all the bodies,” said Leonardo Ricci, a spokesman for rescuers on the island of Lampedusa.
He said there was a “preliminary plan” to raise the wreck filled with corpses from the seabed. Divers spoke of “dozens, maybe hundreds” of bodies trapped in the wreckage, which lies on the seabed at a depth of around 40 metres.
AFP
