Immigrant gives birth on high sea in Italy-bound ship

THE funeral rites of the late Mrs. Sabainah Omonike Awosika, aged 83, will begin with a service of songs by Ladies Friendly Society of St. Paul’s Breadfruit Church Lagos on May 31, at NAPTIN Conference Center 67, Adelabu Street, Surulere Lagos by 3:00p.m. followed by a wake-keep same day and same venue by 5p.m. Funeral service holds on June 1 at St. Paul’s Breadfruit Church Lagos by 11a.m. Entertainment of guests is at NAPTIN conference center, 67, Adelabu Street, Surulere, Lagos State.

ABABY boy named Miracle has been born on board a humanitarian ship, as the tide of migrants risking sea crossings from Libya to Italy has increased owing to the improved weather.

Miracle was born aboard a migrant ship on Saturday, being the first of such among migrants this year. “Both the mother and baby are doing very well,” Amoin Soulemane, the midwife on the ship named Aquarius, said in a statement.

Miracle, weighing 2.8 kg, was the sixth baby born on the rescue ship, but the first this year, said Lauren King, a spokeswoman from the Aquarius.

When Miracle was brought onto deck by the midwife, the migrants on board celebrated his birth by singing and dancing — a far cry from the conditions they said they had came from in Libya.

The mother, whose name was not given, told Doctors Without Borders, MSF, that she had been “held captive, beaten, given very little food and extorted for money for release” during the year she was in Libya.

She was eventually able to escape from her captors, and, on Thursday, she set out to sea on a rubber boat with 68 others. She had the baby aboard on Saturday.

There have been more than 1,800 migrants rescued by humanitarian ships, and Italy’s navy and coastguard vessels over the past three days, and one body was recovered, an Italian coastguard official said.