Muslim christian overboard, Italian police have arrested a group of asylum seekers after witnesses said they threw 12 passengers overboard following a row about religion on a boat headed to Europe.
According to survivors, the fight broke out after a group of Nigerian and Ghanaian passengers declared they were Christian.A group of Muslim passengers allegedly attacked the Christians, which resulted in 12 Nigerian and Ghanaian passengers drowning in the Mediterranean, police said.
The remaining passengers were rescued and brought to Palermo, where the 15 alleged attackers, who came from Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal, were arrested.
The boat, like many of the claptrap vessels flooding Italy's shores each week with migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, had set out from Libya on Tuesday, according to the survivors.The police said the distraught Nigerians and Ghanaians told a "dreadful" story of their struggle to escape with their lives "by forcefully resisting attempts to drown them, forming a veritable human chain in some cases."
Some passengers had taken photographs of the incident, judicial sources who described the accounts as "coherent" told Italian media.
The incident aboard the boat, which was carrying about 100 asylum seekers, coincided with reports of a new drowning tragedy.Four days after a shipwreck off the coast of Libya, in which 400 people are believed to have died, another 41 asylum seekers were feared drowned on Thursday after their rubber dinghy sank en route to Italy.
Italy pleaded for more help from other European Union countries to rescue the asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Europe and to share the burden of accommodating the arrivals.
Italy is not the final destination of most of the tens of thousands of migrants who risk their lives each year in search of a better life in Europe but as their first port of call it is saddled with handling all their asylum requests as well as saving those in danger from a watery grave.
"Ninety per cent of the cost of the patrol and sea rescue operations are falling on our shoulders, and we have not had an adequate response from the EU," Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the daily Corriere della Sera.
"And then there is the difficult issue of knowing where to send those rescued at sea – to the nearest port? To the country where their boat came from? The EU has to respond clearly to these questions," Gentiloni said.
According to survivors, the fight broke out after a group of Nigerian and Ghanaian passengers declared they were Christian.A group of Muslim passengers allegedly attacked the Christians, which resulted in 12 Nigerian and Ghanaian passengers drowning in the Mediterranean, police said.
The boat, like many of the claptrap vessels flooding Italy's shores each week with migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, had set out from Libya on Tuesday, according to the survivors.The police said the distraught Nigerians and Ghanaians told a "dreadful" story of their struggle to escape with their lives "by forcefully resisting attempts to drown them, forming a veritable human chain in some cases."
Some passengers had taken photographs of the incident, judicial sources who described the accounts as "coherent" told Italian media.
The incident aboard the boat, which was carrying about 100 asylum seekers, coincided with reports of a new drowning tragedy.Four days after a shipwreck off the coast of Libya, in which 400 people are believed to have died, another 41 asylum seekers were feared drowned on Thursday after their rubber dinghy sank en route to Italy.
Italy pleaded for more help from other European Union countries to rescue the asylum seekers risking their lives to reach Europe and to share the burden of accommodating the arrivals.
Italy is not the final destination of most of the tens of thousands of migrants who risk their lives each year in search of a better life in Europe but as their first port of call it is saddled with handling all their asylum requests as well as saving those in danger from a watery grave.
"Ninety per cent of the cost of the patrol and sea rescue operations are falling on our shoulders, and we have not had an adequate response from the EU," Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the daily Corriere della Sera.
"And then there is the difficult issue of knowing where to send those rescued at sea – to the nearest port? To the country where their boat came from? The EU has to respond clearly to these questions," Gentiloni said.
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