Abdel pushed
his face up to the cracks between the wooden floorboards, gasping for
air. Next to him between 200 and 300 migrants and refugees – who
departed Zuwarah, Libya in the early hours of Tuesday morning on a
rickety wooden boat – were suffocating in the pitch-black hold.
"We
didn't want to go down there but they beat us with sticks to force
us," said Abdel, 25, from Sudan. "We had no air so
we were trying to get back up through the hatch and to breathe
through the cracks in the ceiling. But the other passengers were
scared the boat would capsize so they pushed us back down and beat us
too. Some were stamping on our hands."
A total of
52 people, including Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Sudanese, died on
board the boat. One man from Sudan was stabbed to death as he tried
to climb out of the hold to ask for water. The others died of
asphyxiation.
The bodies,
along with the survivors of the tragedy, were brought to shore in the
port of Palermo on Thursday night. Poseidon, a Swedish coast guard
vessel, docked in the Sicilian capital around 8.15 pm, carrying 572
refugees and migrants plucked from boats in the Mediterranean the
previous day. Some 100 people were found on a rubber dinghy, which
came from Tripoli, and another 460 on the wooden boat.
Some
refugees paid thousands of euros/dollars for tickets on the upper
deck of the two-tier wooden ship. Many expected to travel in relative
comfort but were shocked by the condition of the boat.
"I
wanted to turn back when I saw the ship," said 45-year-old
Hsna who boarded the boat with her husband, three daughters and baby
son. "It was just a fishing boat and we took our lives in our
hands. It was a boat of death."
Passengers
were transported in rubber dinghies in groups of 20 from the shore to
the shipping vessel. Once they boarded the dinghies, they were not
allowed to turn back.
Amina, 18,
from Damascus, said she feared for her safety travelling as a young
woman without her husband. "It was very dangerous because I'm
so young," she said. "And we also had no food and no
water." Amina, who left Libya with her father-in-law,
sister-in-law and her sister-in-law's two-month-old baby girl,
described the three days at sea as "very difficult".
Mahdi, an
orthopaedic surgeon from Iraq paid 3,000 euros to get his wife Hend
and two-year-old son Mahmed on the top deck. The family said they
were forced to flee Iraq after Mahdi refused to treat militants. "I
had to get my family out," Mahdi said. "I saw what
they were doing to everyone else who didn't obey them."
The migrants
and refugees will now be taken to reception centres across mainland
Italy. 16 Syrians, including three families, will stay in Palermo.
At least 15
people have been taken into custody on suspicion of trafficking.
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