26 women drown in the Med

ITALIAN detectives have opened a murder inquiry into the deaths of 26 women migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean.

The women, thought to be from Nigeria, are the latest to die making the crossing from Libya to Europe.

Yesterday their bodies were taken by a Spanish ship to Salerno, southern Italy.

In total, 23 women died on Friday after the inflatable dinghy they were travelling on sank.

Their bodies were recovered by the Cantabria, a ship oper- ating as part of an EU anti-trafficking effort. A spokesman said the other three bodies had been found later.

Italian media raised fears the boat may have been part of a sex-trafficking ring but Salerno’s prefect Salvatore Malfi played the claims down and said men were also on the boat.

‘The sex-trafficking routes are different,’ he said.

‘Loading women on to a boat is too risky, the traffickers would not do it as they could lose all their “goods” – as they describe them – in one fell swoop.’

He said investigators would be looking for signs of violence against the women. The Cantabria was also carrying 375 migrants rescued from the sea, including 116 women, nine of whom were pregnant.

More than 111,700 people have reached Italy by sea in the first ten months of 2017.

The International Organisation for Migration said that 2,839 people have died so far this year while attempting the crossing.