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The BBC's Gavin Hewitt: "The survivors tell a tragic story"
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At
least 130 African migrants have died and many more are missing after a
boat carrying them to Europe sank off the southern Italian island of
Lampedusa.
A total of 103 bodies have been recovered and more have been found inside the wreck, coast guards say.
Passengers
reportedly threw themselves into the sea when a fire broke out on
board. More than 150 of the migrants have been rescued.
Most of those on board were from Eritrea and Somalia, said the UN.
The boat was believed to have been carrying up to 500 people at the time and some 200 of them are unaccounted for.
Italian
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said the ship had come from Misrata
in Libya and began taking on water when its motor stopped working.
It
is thought that some of those on board set fire to a piece of material
to try to attract the attention of passing ships, only to have the fire
spread to the rest of the boat.
Simona Moscarelli, a spokeswoman
from the International Organization for Migration in Rome, told the BBC
that in order to escape the fire, "the migrants moved, all of them, to
one side of the boat which capsized".
She estimated that only six of about 100 women on board survived, adding that most of the migrants were unable to swim.
"Only the strongest survived," she said.
It
is one of the worst such disasters to occur off the Italian coast in
recent years; Prime Minister Enrico Letta tweeted that it was "an
immense tragedy". The government has declared a day of national mourning
on Friday.
"There is no miraculous solution to the migrant exodus
issue," said Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "If there were we
would have found it and put it into action."
In a separate
incident on Thursday, local media reported that around 200 migrants were
escorted to the port of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, when their
vessel encountered difficulties five miles off the coast.
Earlier this week, 13 migrants drowned while trying to reach Sicily.
The mayor, Giusi Nicolini, described the scene as a "continuous horror".
"It's horrific, like a cemetery, they are still bringing them out," she said, according to Reuters.
The
boat went down a few hundred metres from the shore of the island and
divers said they found 40 bodies in and around the sunken boat on the
sea bed.
Mr Alfano said at least three children and two pregnant
women were among the dead. Local media reported that a suspected people
smuggler had been arrested.
One Eritrean woman who had been placed
among the bodies recovered from the sea was later found to be
breathing, Italian media said. She was taken to hospital in Sicily.
Pope
Francis sent a Twitter message calling for prayers for the "victims of
the tragic shipwreck off Lampedusa". In July he visited the island and
condemned the "global indifference" to the plight of migrants trying to
arrive there.
In a later audience at the Vatican, he said: "The word is disgrace: This is disgrace!"
In
a statement UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres
commended the swift action taken by the Italian coast guard to save
lives.
Mr Guterres also expressed "dismay at the rising global
phenomenon of migrants and people fleeing conflict or persecution and
perishing at sea".
At this time of year, when the Mediterranean
tends to be calmer, vessels carrying migrants from Africa and the Middle
East land on Italy's southern shores almost every day, the BBC's Alan
Johnston reports from Rome.
But often the vessels are overcrowded and are not seaworthy.
The
UN said that in recent months most migrants attempting the crossing
were fleeing the conflicts in Syria and the Horn of Africa, rather than
coming from sub-Saharan Africa.
The UN High Commissioner for
Refugees said that more than 1,500 people drowned or went missing while
attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe in 2011, making it
the "most deadly stretch of water for refugees and migrants".
The UN also said that almost 500 people were reported dead or missing at sea during 2012 in attempts to reach Europe.
The number of those arriving by sea to Italy this year until 30 September stood at 30,100, according to the UN.
The main nationalities of those arriving were Syrian (7,500), Eritrean (7,500) and Somali (3,000).
On
Wednesday a draft report from human rights body the Council of Europe
said that Italy was "ill-prepared for a new surge of mixed migration on
its coasts".