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Over 400 go missing in Med

Six bodies aboard dinghy rescued off Libya

Redazione Ansa

(see related story on migration compact) (ANSAmed) - Rome, April 18 - Over 400 people, most of them from Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, travelling from Egypt aboard migrants boats and heading towards Italy, have gone missing in the Mediterranean, the Mail online reported on Monday citing the BBC's Arabic service, which, in turn, referred to local media.
    Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Rome was trying to verify the reports.
    In a separate case, six dead bodies were recovered from a migrant dinghy rescued in choppy waters late on Sunday some 20 miles off the coast of Libya in an operation coordinated by the Italian coast guard, ANSA sources said.
    The operation saved 108 people, including five women, from the dinghy that was headed towards Italy. More than 20 people are probably missing as survivors said between 130 and 140 were aboard the dinghy that set off from the Libyan port of Zabratah.
    They were saved by the Aquarius ship of the SOS Mediterranee NGO, which docked at the Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday. Italian President Sergio Mattarella said reports of another in a long series of migrant-boat disasters in the southern Mediterranean should stir profound reflection and debate. "There is truly a need to think," Mattarella said at a ceremony for the presentation of the candidates for Italy's David di Donatello film awards. "And the umpteenth tragedy in the Mediterranean today reminds us of this". Gentiloni said the disaster showed the need to discuss Italy's proposal for a new migration compact for the European Union. "It's an extra reason to discuss the migration compact prepared by Italy," Gentiloni said. The minister pointed out that the disaster comes a year after a wreck off the Libya coast in which around 800 people died. "The symbolic fact that it has happened a year after, even if in a completely different area, must touch our conscience and make us think".
   

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