An Icelandic Coast Guard ship was towing a cargo vessel to Italy with about 450 migrants who were abandoned by smugglers, leaving the vessel navigating without a crew, authorities said.
Italian Coast Guard Commander Filippo Marini yesterday said that after several hours of struggling in rough seas, Italian rescue teams managed to secure the Ezadeen for towing toward the southern Calabrian region. The Icelandic ship, part of a new European patrol force to aid migrants at sea, was doing the tow.
Children and pregnant women were among the migrants, most of who were believed to be Syrian, Marini said.
The Sierra-Leone-flagged cargo ship apparently set sail from Turkey, he said.
The exact port of the Ezadeen’s arrival will depend on sea conditions, authorities said.
Earlier yesterday, Marini said that a migrant had called for help saying: “We’re without crew; we’re heading toward the Italian coast and we have no one to steer.”
The Ezadeen is the second cargo ship full of migrants to be abandoned while still sailing this week.
Earlier this week Italian sailors intercepted a freighter carrying nearly 770 migrants which had been drifting toward the rocks of Italy’s southeastern shore on autopilot. The ship had been abandoned by the people smugglers who had navigated it from Turkey via Greek waters.
The Moldovan-registered Blue Sky M cargo ship got to within 8km — or 45 minutes sailing time — of a disaster before six navy officers were lowered on to the ship by helicopter and succeeded in bringing it under control.
The vessel’s human cargo included about 60 children and two pregnant women, one of whom gave birth on board as the boat steamed toward catastrophe, the Italian Red Cross said.
Many of the migrants on the ship were treated for hypothermia and broken limbs.
The migrant boat dramas have come as Italy grapples with the aftermath of the Norman Atlantic ferry disaster in which at least 13 people have died following an onboard fire that erupted before dawn on Sunday in waters off Albania.
They also come after a record year for people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia attempting to reach Europe by sea.
More than 170,000 people have been rescued by Italy in the past 14 months and hundreds, possibly thousands, have perished trying to make the crossing.
They are almost invariably under the control of ruthless traffickers who earn thousands of dollars for every person they put to sea from Libya and other departure points in North Africa.
Increasingly, the traffickers appear to have decided that the best way to get their human cargoes to Europe is to put to sea and then abandon the boats.
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