AFP)Italian police on Thursday said 12 African
migrants had died after being thrown
overboard by fellow passengers in the latest
high-seas tragedy in the Mediterranean, as
another 41 boat migrants were feared drowned
in a separate incident.
Police in the Sicilian port of Palermo said they
had arrested 15 Muslim migrants suspected of
attacking Christian passengers after a religious
row on a boat headed for Italy, which is
struggling to cope with a huge spike in illegal
migrants arriving on its shores.
The 12 victims were all Nigerians and
Ghanaians while the 15 suspects came from
Senegal, Mali and Ivory Coast. They were
charged with “multiple aggravated murder
motivated by religious hate,” according to a
police statement.
Distraught survivors, who set off from Libya on
Tuesday before being rescued by an Italian
vessel on Wednesday, told a “dreadful” story of
“forcefully resisting attempts to drown them,
forming a veritable human chain in some
cases,” police said.
Nigerian and Ghanaian survivors told
police a group of Muslim passengers on
the boat, which was carrying around 100
people, began threatening the Nigerians
and Ghanaians after they declared
themselves to be Christians. “The threats
then materialised and 12 people, all
Nigerian and Ghanaian, are believed to
have drowned in the Mediterranean,” the
police statement added
In another drama, 41 migrants were missing
feared drowned on after their dinghy sank en
route to Italy, the International Organization
for Migration (IOM) said, mere days after 400
migrants are believed to have died in another
shipwreck off the coast of Libya.
The four survivors in Thursday’s shipwreck,
who came from Nigeria, Ghana and Niger, said
their boat sank after setting sail from Libya
with 45 people on board.
Their vessel was spotted by a plane, which
alerted the Italian coastguard, but by the time a
navy ship arrived to help them only four
passengers were found alive. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL AND TOUCHING NIGERIAN CELEBRITIES BIOGRAPHY AND SCANDALS
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