80 more migrants drown in latest Italy boat tragedy
July 02, 2014  23:53
Eighty more migrants are feared drowned after another shipwreck off Italy, just days after dozens of others suffocated in the hold of an overcrowded fishing boat. 

The victims "met an atrocious end at the hands of unscrupulous death merchants who profit from desperation to make money out of journeys carried out in inhuman conditions," Italy's Interior Minister Angelo Alfano told the Senate today. 

In the latest tragedy, a group of 27 survivors told the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) that there had been another 75 people on board their boat -- a large rubber dinghy -- who were lost at sea. Six more are missing from another migrant boat attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya. 

"According to the information gathered so far, the shipwreck occurred because the rubber dinghy was overcrowded and in a poor state," Catania prosecutor Giovanni Salvi was quoted as saying by Italian media.
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