20 drowned as gang push migrants off packed boat
JACOB, SEVEN, ON MISSION IN MEMORY OF
TWENTY migrants are feared to have drowned after people smugglers threw 80 of them overboard because their boat was too heavy.
The craft was carrying around 200 people – including children – from Djibouti in east Africa to Yemen, where many hoped to enter Saudi Arabia to find work.
But about half an hour after setting sail at 2am the crew panicked.
‘Of the 80 people who were forced off, only 60 made it back to shore,’ said Yvonne Ndege, spokeswoman for the UN International Organisation for Migration.
She said five bodies had been retrieved so far after Wednesday’s tragedy.
Survivors were receiving medical treatment in the Djibouti port town of Obock yesterday and their testimonies were still being collected.
Drownings have become more common in the country’s waters as migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia try to escape poverty and war by finding work in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
Eight people drowned last October when they were forced off a boat by smugglers as they returned from Yemen after failing to reach Saudi Arabia.
In 2018, at least 30 migrants died when a boat capsized off Yemen, with survivors reporting gunfire.
A year earlier, up to 50 migrants from Somalia and Ethiopia were ‘deliberately drowned’ when a smuggler forced more than 120 into the sea as his boat approached Yemen’s shore. Survivors
told officials the smuggler in charge had pushed them in the sea ‘when he saw some authority types near the coast’.
A report by the IOM last October found many migrants were unaware of the risks they would face at sea on their quest for a better life.
A LITTLE fighter aged seven who lost his mum to cancer will walk up three mountains in three days to raise money in her memory.
Jacob Newson – who dreams of being an RAF pilot – will walk up Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-ghent in the Yorkshire Dales for St Gemma’s hospice in Leeds, who cared for Andrea, 49.
She died on December 27, just over a year since being diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite chemotherapy and surgery, the NHS analyst kept working to collate figures in the pandemic.
Jacob, who will wear his flying suit for the 7,500ft climb this summer said: ‘I want to raise pennies for the people that helped and tried to save my mummy to say thank you.’
Dad Andrew said: ‘Andrea lived for her job and for her family – everything Jacob is today is because of her. Jacob has been so brave. I’m so proud of both of them.’
Donate at justgiving.com/ fundraising/ Jacob-Newson1?
DNA found on a coffee cup in a cannabis factory led police to a man with a Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum revolver stashed in his wardrobe.
Officers found ‘insufficient evidence’ to convict Michael Naughton over 200 plants they discovered – even though the genetic clue showed he must have been at the factory in Kirby, Kent.
But he has been jailed for five years for illegally possessing firearms after detectives raided his home in Bromley, south-east London.
The fully working Magnum, gun of choice for Clint Eastwood in 1971 film
Dirty Harry, was found with ammunition, a semi-automatic World War I Luger, gold bars and £20,000.
Naughton admitted keeping the weapons and ammo. His lawyer Ben Irwin told Maidstone crown court: ‘He sought out items to sell to make money in house clearances. ‘He sees himself as a victim of his own stupidity.’ But recorder Ed Burge QC said Naughton’s claim he found the guns and ammo at house clearances and a Ministry of Defence depot ‘stretches credibility too far’.