Search resumed for wreck victims

DIVERS have recovered another 16 bodies from the shipwreck of a fishing boat packed with 500 migrants from Eritrea which went down off an Italian island.

Rescuers told the LaPresse news agency that bodies were recovered after divers resumed their search yesterday morning off Lampedusa.

They were brought to shore and placed onto trucks to be taken to the makeshift morgue at the airport.

Financial police Major Leonardo Ricci said the search and recovery would continue “as long as the sea is calm and there is light”.

The search had been suspended for the past two days due to rough seas. There are 155 survivors and more than 200 people remain missing. Authorities have so far recovered 127 bodies.

About 500 migrants were packed onto the boat, which caught fire and capsized last Thursday.

The team of 40 divers is working in small groups because, at a depth of 160 feet, each one will only be able to remain on the wreck for about 10 minutes at a time.

On Saturday, some of the 155 Somali and Eritrean survivors paid their respects to the men, women and children whose bodies are lying in a hangar at the island’s airport.

The disaster has put a new focus on decades-long problems around illegal immigration from North Africa.