The government commissioner for
missing persons said Wednesday operations to salvage a
shipwrecked migrant boat that sank with an estimated 800 asylum
seekers on board will begin April 18, exactly one year after
what was one of the worst maritime disasters in the
Mediterranean.
"The operation will be coordinated by the Navy and will
last a couple of days," Commissioner Vittorio Piscitelli told
reporters at an interior ministry press conference.
"So far we recovered 169 bodies and we estimate no less
than 400 remain in the boat," he added.
"However we expect some surprises - there could be more,
although we hope there will be fewer".
Four teams of coroners will be deployed to try to complete
the process of identifying the victims in under a month, the
commissioner added. This will take place at a NATO base near the
Sicilian port of Augusta, where the wreck will be taken once
it's recovered from the seabed in the Strait of Sicily.
Italian investigators said at the time of the disaster that
they estimated 850 people were on board the migrant boat when it
sank after a people smuggler at the helm rammed it into a cargo
ship.
Rescuers saved 28 people from the wreck.
"It has not yet been possible to establish the death
toll," investigators were quoted as saying by ANSA sources,
adding that survivors gave numbers ranging from 400 to 950
passengers.
But they added the survivors' testimony and a report from
a Portuguese merchant ship sent to rescue the boat led them to
estimate that "there were around 850 migrants aboard".
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