Some 126 migrants die in shipwreck
Four survivors have told how some 126 fellow migrants drowned off Libya last week when their flimsy rubber dinghy foundered after smugglers removed the engine and fled, the UN migration agency said Monday.
Flavio Di Giacomo of the International Organization for Migration said the survivors were interviewed in Sicily after an Italian coast guard ship brought them to Palermo's port Monday.
The two Sudanese and two Nigerian survivors told authorities that a few hours after the migrant smugglers' dinghy set off from Libyan shores Thursday night, the crew removed the engine and left in another boat. The migrant boat quickly foundered. The survivors said some 130 people, most of them Sudanese, had been aboard.
A Libyan fishing vessel, passing by chance, rescued the four and put them on another dinghy, also crowded with smuggled migrants, that was nearby. That boat itself was found by rescuers, and all the passengers were eventually transferred to the coast guard vessel.
