REPORT: Around 20 more bodies found after Sicily migrant boat disaster

       
Italian rescue divers have found some 20 bodies underwater near a boat carrying African migrants that caught fire and sank off the island of Lampedusa on Thursday, a coast guard official said, bringing the total of known dead to more than 100.           

"The coast guard divers have begun inspections: they have found around 20 bodies around the boat at a depth of about 40 metres," Floriana Segreto told Reuters.              
She said divers were continuing the search.           

This as, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said that an estimated 500 passengers on a boat that sank off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Thursday were all believed to be Eritreans coming from Libya.          

The boat caught fire half a mile from the coast, UNHCR said. The local mayor said earlier that 82 dead bodies had been recovered, and officials said many people were still missing.                    
So far 141 people have been rescued, but the boat is believed to have been carrying as many as 500 people.            

It is one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in recent times and the second one this week off Italy: On Monday, 13 men drowned while trying to reach southern Sicily when their ship ran aground just a few meters (yards) from shore at Scicli.           

Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini said the dead on Thursday included a child of about 3 and a pregnant woman. "It's an immense tragedy," she said.              


AP/REUTERS


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