CNN.com--A boat carrying 300 African immigrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea near Libya’s coastline, leaving at least sixteen Somali asylum-seekers including children and pregnant women dead.
In an interview with BBC Somali Service, Abdul-ghani Mohammed Wa’eys, the Somali ambassador to Libya said that the boat, which was very small and overcrowded, had sailed from the coastline of Tripoli of the turbulent Libya early Friday morning.
The ambassador noted at least 48 others are still missing though efforts to rescue them or collect their bodies underway.
“The identities of missing people, who are feared dead, are still unknown,” he said.
The diplomat revealed that the boat sank and smashed into pieces only an hour after sailing and said the reason was probably that the boat has been overcrowded with migrants.
This was the second deadly incident in a month in the Mediterranean. On April 14, two more died after a very crowded boat carrying Somalis and others immigrants capsized off the Italian Island of Pantelleria.
Somalis and other African immigrants take the most casualties whenever traveling very dangerous seas to reach Europe or Arab countries in an attempt to get a better life than they had in the homeland with fighting is going on in some of African nations including Somalia.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, May 8th 2011 at 2:19PM
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