Witnesses say about 500 dead in Mediterranean shipwreck

Migrants rescued from a small boat in the Mediterranean told the UN refugee agency they had witnessed a shipwreck that claimed 500 lives, a UNHCR spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The 41 survivors from Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt described seeing “a large shipwreck that took place in the Mediterranean Sea claiming the lives of approximately 500 people,” Carlotta Sami said in a statement sent to AFP.

On Monday Italy’s navy said that work to salvage a sunken trawler stuffed with the corpses of refugees was progressing but that the wreck would not be brought to port before next month.

In a statement on the first anniversary of a disaster in which hundreds of refugees are feared to have perished, the navy said the salvage operation was behind schedule because of poor sea conditions in the area off Libya where the boat went down on the night of April 18-19, 2015.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has vowed to give every one of the victims a decent burial.

Only 28 people survived the disaster, which occurred after the overcrowded trawler collided with a large cargo ship that had gone to help it.

The sinking is thought to have been the deadliest of the current migrant crisis and the worst to have occurred in the Mediterranean in decades.

The boat sank to a depth of 380 meters. Italian divers have recovered 169 bodies from around it and seen hundreds more trapped inside.

Once raised, the boat is to be towed to the port of Augusta in Sicily where attempts will be made to identify the victims from any documents not destroyed by the water and with the help of DNA experts.