Drowned migrant baby was probably Somali, mother also believed dead - Italian police

A dead baby plucked out of the sea whose picture sparked international outrage this week was probably a six-month-old Somali boy whose mother also most likely died in the shipwreck, Italian police said on Wednesday. Like the photograph of the three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan lying lifeless on a Turkish beach last year, the image put a human face on the more than 9,000 people who have died in the Mediterranean since the start of 2014. The baby was pulled from the sea last Friday by a German rescuer working for humanitarian organisation Sea-Watch after a wooden boat carrying more than 400 migrants capsized and sank some 58 km (36 miles) off the Libyan coast. Sea-Watch immediately handed the boy's body over to the crew of the Vega, an Italian navy ship. The Vega brought 135 survivors and 45 bodies recovered after the shipwreck to the southern port city of Reggio Calabria on Sunday, including those of three small children, two boys and a girl. Sea-Watch said it had distributed the photograph of the baby because it wanted to persuade European authorities to ensure safe passage to migrants after at least 700 were feared to have drowned in three separate shipwrecks in the Mediterranean...

from timesofmalta.com http://ift.tt/1sLnyuY
via IFTTT