A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, May 25, 2017
'Most are toddlers': Dozens die as refugee boat founders off Libya
The migrants were on a wooden boat carrying as many as 700 people 20 nautical miles of the Libyan coast
A still from a video taken by a member of the rescue crew (Twitter)
AFP-Wednesday 24 May 2017
At least 30 migrants including young children drowned on Wednesday when
they fell off an overloaded vessel in the Mediterranean, where tensions
are rising between aid ships and the Libyan coastguard.
"There's a critical situation today. About 200 people fell into the
water," a coastguard spokesman told AFP, while a humanitarian worker at
the scene said 31 bodies had been recovered.
The migrants were on a wooden boat carrying between 500 and 700 people
and were just 20 nautical miles off the Libyan coast when the accident
happened.
The boat listed suddenly, sending about 200 people tumbling into the
Mediterranean, Italian coastguard commander Cosimo Nicastro told
Reuters.
The crew of the Phoenix aid boat, chartered by the Maltese NGO Moas, had
begun the rescue and were distributing lifejackets when many of those
on deck fell into the water, perhaps knocked off balance by a wave.
Body Count now at 34...Most are toddlers pic.twitter.com/FlQ0V6PliA— Chris Catrambone (@cpcatrambone) 24 May 2017
"Not a scene from a horror movie... Real life tragedy unfolding on
Europe's doorstep today," said Chris Catrambone, Moas co-founder, who
was aboard the Phoenix and published photos showing white body bags
lined up on the deck.
"Rescuers are frantically trying to break open the locked hold on a
wooden boat where hundreds of migrants are trapped!" he tweeted.
With the help of an Italian coastguard ship and several commercial
ships, rescuers raced to drag as many people as possible from the water,
while a military aircraft dropped life-rafts and a helicopter looked
for survivors.
"Current body count at 31," Catrambone said, adding many who fell overboard had been "small toddlers".
'Shots fired'
About 15 relief operations were under way Wednesday off Libya in total, the coastguard said.
On Tuesday, they coordinated the rescue of about 1,500 people, while
their Libyan counterparts intercepted 237 others, including 20 women and
15 children, travelling on two wooden boats.
Among the migrants was a group of 12 Libyans - including five women and
three children - who were trying to flee the conflict-hit country.
Libyans have been a rare sight on migrant boats so far.
The German NGO Jugend Rettet said on Tuesday it had had a run-in with
armed men on a boat purportedly commandeered by the Libyan coastguard.
The Libyan boat already had passengers on board - presumably picked up from a dinghy in the area.
Jugend Rettet published a photograph appearing to show the armed men
pointing their weapons directly at the migrants and said "a variety of
shots" were fired "and refugees were beaten".
Some 100 people on the Libyan boat panicked when the shots rang out and
threw themselves into the water, swimming towards the German boat
Iuventa and the SOS Mediterranee boat Aquarius, which was also at the
scene.
"We cannot say whether and how many dead there were in the shooting. We
had to be careful not to get a bullet ourselves," Jugend Rettet said in a
statement citing the Iuventa's 25-year old captain Jonas, without
giving his surname.
The Libyan coastguard has recently begun carrying out its own operations
at sea, towing migrant dinghies headed for Europe back to shore and
locking up those recovered in centres which are renowned for human
rights abuses.