The death toll from Sunday’s sinking of a migrant boat near Crotone in southern Italy rose to 64 on Tuesday, a tragedy that saw the arrest of three smugglers, officials said.
A spokesman for Crotone’s firefighters told AFP the toll was expected to rise after a new body was found off the coast of the small town of Steccato, which was still searching for victims at sea. The part that forms the heel of an Italian shoe.
According to the European border police agency Frontex, which first spotted the boat on Saturday evening, about 200 people were crammed aboard the boat, which left Izmir in Turkey, while the Italian coast guard put the number at 150 passengers.
Only 79 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria survived the shipwreck when it sank at sea in the early hours of Sunday.
The coffins of the victims were put on display at the Palamilone sports complex in Crotone, a town of nearly 60,000 people, for public tributes.
Smugglers arrested
A police spokesman confirmed to AFP on Tuesday that three smugglers, two Pakistanis and one Turkish, had been arrested as part of the investigation. According to the Italian agency AGI, they are suspected of charging around 8,000 euros for each migrant they boarded.
Several NGOs, including Médecins sans Frontières, sent teams to the scene to care for survivors, including children who saw their loved ones drown.
According to the Italian Interior Ministry, almost 14,000 migrants have landed in Italy since the start of the year, up from around 5,200 in the same period last year and 4,200 in 2021.
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