EIGHT MIGRANTS SUFFOCATE IN LORRY CONTAINER AT LIBYA COAST
Six children die from suspected petrol fumes in container carrying more than 90 people
Eight migrants including six children were found dead yesterday after suffocating from petrol fumes while inside a lorry container on the west Libyan coast.
Another 90 migrants recovered from the container were said to be in a critical condition and had been taken to a local hospital for treatment, the security directorate in the town of Zuwara said.
Zuwara is one of the points on Libya’s western coastline where smugglers and traffickers hold migrants before putting them on boats to try to cross to Europe.
The migrants were from sub-Saharan African and Arab countries, as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh, the security directorate said. They were inside a refrigerated container designed to transport meat or fish.
It was found near Zuwara, close to the Mellitah oil and gas complex. Zuwara is about 110 kilometres from the capital, Tripoli.
“As a result of the length of time eight of them died, including six children, a woman and a young man,” the security directorate said.
Gallons of petrol were found in the container.
The directorate posted pictures of nine jerry cans in the container, as well as a pile of life-jackets apparently intended for use in a boat crossing.
Daytime temperatures in north-west Libya have been 35°C-plus in recent days.
Smugglers and traffickers took advantage of Libya’s lawlessness to send hundreds of thousands of migrants to Italy over the past four years, although flows have slowed since last summer after an Italian-backed clampdown on smuggling networks.
Meanwhile hundreds of migrants yesterday finally disembarked in Italy from two ships after other Europea\n countries agreed to accept more than half of them, ending a diplomatic stand-off that had left them stuck at sea. The remaining migrants aboard the Italian ship Monte Sperone and the British vessel Protector, which had picked up 450 asylum seekers from a crowded boat that left Libya on Friday, came ashore at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo.
At least eight suspected people smugglers were driven away in police cars, while identification procedures were begun at the port for the other migrants.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who had insisted that EU partners should take them in, said the offer by five countries to accept 50 migrants each had vindicated his hardline immigration stance.
“Firmness and consistency pays off,” said Mr Salvini, who is leading a high-profile campaign to exclude humanitarian rescue ships from Italian ports.
Eight of the migrants in poor medical condition were allowed to land on the Italian island of Lampedusa on Saturday and another 27 women and children disembarked in Pozzallo on Sunday.
“The next objective, to eradicate all the people-smuggling mafias, will be to re-accompany immigrants back where they came from,” said Mr Salvini, who leads the rightwing Lega party.
He was speaking after Germany, France, Malta, Spain and Portugal each agreed to accept a share of the migrants.
Mr Salvini argues that European countries should find a way to block the migrants before they leave Africa, or send boats with asylum seekers back to the ports from which they came, including to Libya.
But under international law, refugees cannot be returned to a place where their lives are in danger. The UN and the EU have ruled that Libya is not safe.
With Italy taking a harder line on migrants, the number of those trying to cross to Spain has increased.
Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service said at least 479 people, including more than 100 children, were rescued over the weekend while trying to cross a narrow stretch of the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa.
The service said 330 migrants were rescued on Saturday, most of them in the Strait of Gibraltar area and some farther east in a part of the Mediterranean known as the Alboran Sea.
They included about 100 minors who were picked up by a Spanish Civil Guard vessel, and a Moroccan man who was found drifting on an inflated inner tube from a lorry tyre.
The rescue service said another 149 people were brought ashore on Sunday.
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said last week that more than 16,900 migrants had arrived in Spain this year, a figure that was close to the number of arrivals in Italy.