Survivor of shipwreck in Lampedusa, Italy Thousands of migrants have risked their lives to reach Italy this year<\/p>\n
Nineteen migrants have died, reportedly by suffocating, aboard a crowded boat travelling from North Africa to Italy.<\/p>\n
The migrants are thought to have choked on fumes from an old engine while they were confined below deck, Italian news agency Ansa reports.<\/p>\n
Rescuers found 18 people in a tangle of bodies. Another person is said to have died during the evacuation. The boat was carrying some 600 people.<\/p>\n
Italy is struggling to cope with a rising flow of migrants to its shores.<\/p>\n
Many of them make the dangerous crossing from Africa on crowded and unseaworthy vessels, says the BBC’s Rome correspondent, Alan Johnston.<\/p>\n
The boat in the latest incident was heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa. It was intercepted after it sent out an SOS signal.<\/p>\n
Two passengers from the boat have been taken for treatment to a hospital in Sicily.<\/p>\n
In the past month, at least 45 migrants have died in similar circumstances – as a result of being crushed or asphyxiated aboard overcrowded boats.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Ansa reported that migrants rescued by a merchant ship this week had spoken of a shipwreck in which 60 people had drowned. Migration to Italy and Malta There has recently been a huge rise in the number of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.<\/p>\n
EU border agency Frontex says almost 60,000 migrants have already landed in southern Italy this year.<\/p>\n
Most are from Africa or the Middle East and pay large sums to smugglers in Libya and Tunisia, who transport them in unsafe fishing vessels.<\/p>\n
Officials say Libya’s continuing political instability is partly to blame for the rise.<\/p>\n
Italy – which bears the brunt of migrants making the crossing – launched a rescue operation in the Mediterranean last year, and has repeatedly appealed for the EU’s help to tackle the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Survivor of shipwreck in Lampedusa, Italy Thousands of migrants have risked their lives to reach Italy this year Nineteen migrants have died, reportedly by suffocating, aboard a crowded boat travelling from North Africa to Italy. The migrants are thought to have choked on fumes from an old engine while they were confined below deck, Italian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":""},"categories":[14,17,169,173,161,141],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbrace.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}