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Sicily

Tragic rescue of African survivors today

From the Giornale di Sicilia:
They said they left Libya on a rubber raft carrying 130-140 people. 108 f them were rescued by the Ship Aquarius of the SOS Mediterranean non profit group. Two drowned, six bodies were found on the bottom of the raft which had bent into a V shape, disabled, the motor quit working. All the others were lost at sea. The rescue operation was carried out in six-foot seas with wind at Force 5-6. The raft was nearly completely deflated and full of water. The immigrants said they had left Zabratah, Libya at 9 yesterday morning and got into trouble after 9 hours of navigation toward European shores. Some of them panicked when they saw the rescue ship and jumped into the sea to swim toward it and two of these people drowned, while one was saved. The cadavers could not be recuperated because the rescuers only found them at the bottom of the raft once the rescue operation was over and the seas were too high to reove the dead bodies.
The people on the raft were from Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The shipwrecked peopl suffered from hypothermia and were traumatized by their experiences. Some had serious ifficulties in moving. They were all taken aboard and treated by the medical team of Médecins di Monde, which translates as Doctors of the World.
Now I am going to see if the US media has any stories about this shipwreck.
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