Catania: People smugglers responsible for the Mediterranean`s worst disaster in decades beat several migrants to death and executed at least one minor before the boat left Libya with more than 750 people aboard, survivors have told investigators.
The Prosecutor`s office in the Sicilian city of Catania on Thursday identified the 26 men who, along with two crew members, were the only survivors of Sunday`s catastrophe, saying publication of the names by the media was the only way they could inform friends and family.
They are 12 Malians, four Eritreans, three Bangladeshis, two nationals of Senegal and Somalia and one each from Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and the Gambia.
The men have described how the people smugglers operated a reign of terror while the migrants were held prior to embarkment in a disused building near the city of Tripoli.
Anyone who did not immediately obey orders was beaten with sticks, fatally in several cases.
Taken by truck to the coast, the migrants were then ferried by dinghy to the waiting boat, on which most of them were packed into the hold or a lower deck from which it seems they had no chance of escape when the vessel capsized and sunk.
A boy who climbed on to a dinghy before being told to was killed by the smugglers and his body tossed overboard, one survivor told the investigators.
Several survivors testified that the building where they were held was run by armed men in uniform. One said he had seen men he assumed to be Libyan police officers being paid off prior to the boat`s departure.
The survivors said other migrants had perished from illness or exhaustion.
Based on their testimony, the Catania prosecutor said he believed there were more than 750 people on board the boat when it left Libya.
He has asked the navy to send a submarine to photograph and film the sunken wreck so that he can assess whether to try and salvage it for the purposes of the investigation.
The investigators said the passengers had paid anything between 1,000 Libyan dinars ($730) and $7,000 for their passage to Italy. They could not establish why the amounts varied so significantly.Sunday`s accidents raised the number of migrants to have drowned in the waters between Libya and Italy this year to more than 1,700 since January 1 and nearly 5,000 since the start of last year.
Italy`s interior ministry is expecting migrant arrivals at Italian ports to run at a rate of 5,000 per week from now until September -- pointing to a total for the year around 200,000, up from last year`s record figure of 170,000.
A new disaster was narrowly averted on Thursday when 84 Africans on an inflatable dinghy were rescued by the Italian coastguard close to Libya just minutes before their overcrowded vessel sunk.
Another consignment of 220 migrants rescued from their two 14-metre dinghies disembarked at Catania.
Mario Morcone, Italy`s top immigration official, said in an interview with Il Messaggero that Italy was currently hosting 81,000 people in reception centres while processing their applications for asylum or leave to remain, 13,000 of them unaccompanied minors.
