Feared Dead News

Italian authorities on Wednesday said forty-one migrants are thought to have died in a shipwreck last week in the central Mediterranean, according to accounts by survivors who have been taken to the island of Lampedusa.Local public prosecutor Salvatore Vella confirmed media reports that four people who survived the shipwreck told rescuers they were on a boat carrying 45 people, including three children.Vella's office has opened an investigation into the incident.The 7-meter-long boat set off on Thursday morning from Tunisia's Sfax…

Survivors of a boat disaster that likely killed hundreds of migrants near Greece have given accounts of traffickers in North Africa cramming them into a clapped-out fishing trawler. They recounted hellish conditions above and below deck, with no food or water.Some also said the tragic end, when it came, was precipitated by the actions of the Greek coastguard. They have told judicial authorities of a doomed attempt to tow the overloaded trawler that caused the vessel to capsize…

The Trinity Spirit FPSO, operated by Nigeria's SEPCOL, exploded Wednesday and started burning, and, according to videos shared on social media, sinking. However, according to Rystad Energy, the incident is not expected to have an impact on Nigerian production as the unit was not producing at the time of the explosion. Environmental implications, however, are yet to be quantified.According to a Reuters report on Wednesday, an industry source active in Nigeria's oil sector said the FPSO had about 50…

Thirty-seven migrants are feared dead after a dinghy carrying dozens of people capsized off the coast of Spain's Canary Islands, the sole survivor to have been found so far told Spain's maritime rescue services on Thursday.A rescue helicopter carrying the survivor - a 30-year-old woman who appeared exhausted and shaken - and two corpses landed at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria airport, in the Canarian capital, after a cargo ship found them 135 miles away from the coast.The woman told rescue workers that 40 migrants were aboard the dinghy…

A crew member of a Japanese cargo ship was feared dead on Sunday after he was recovered near a vessel that had capsized and sunk following a collision in domestic waters, local media reported.Japanese coast guard ships and aircraft have been searching since Friday for three missing crew members of the cargo ship after the collision with a Marshall Islands-registered tanker in the Seto Inland Sea.Public broadcaster NHK said the coast guard found the crew member in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest on Sunday morning near the sunk vessel.The Japanese coast guard was not immediately reachable by phone on Sunday.Japan's Transport Safety Board is conducting an investigation on board the chemical tanker…

A Russian fishing trawler capsized and sank in the freezing waters of the northern Barents Sea on Monday, with 17 of its 19 crew members feared dead.The Emergency Situations Ministry attributed the sinking to a heavy build-up of ice on the trawler, which sank off the coast of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.It said two crew members had been rescued by another fishing boat in the area and that searches to try to recover the rest of the crew were ongoing."Chances of survival in such conditions…

More than 40 people were feared to have drowned in Mozambique's conflict-torn north after their boat sank, the administrator of an island district said on Tuesday.Almost 400,000 people have fled their homes in the northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, according to the World Food Programme. Home to gas projects worth some $60 billion, the province is also the target of an Islamist insurgency with links to Islamic State that has flourished since 2017.The boat was carrying 74 people fleeing the violence when it sank on Sunday in the Indian Ocean between the islands of Ibo and Matemo…

About 115 people are missing and feared to have drowned and another 134 were rescued by Libyan coast guards and local fishermen after a wooden boat carrying migrants capsized off Libya, a Libyan navy official said on Thursday.Earlier, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that up to 150 people were feared dead."The worst Mediterranean tragedy of this year has just occurred," UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said in a tweet.There were about 250 people on board, mainly from Eritrea and other sub-Saharan Africa and Arab countries, when the boat capsized off the coast near Komas, east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said.Libya is a hub for migrants and refugees…

At least 116 migrants are missing and another 132 were rescued by Libyan coast guards and local fishermen after a wooden boat capsized off the coast of Komas, a town east of the capital Tripoli, Libyan navy spokesman Ayoub Qassem said on Thursday.Qassem cited survivors as saying there had been more than 200 migrants on board the boat.Earlier, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said that up to 150 people were feared dead in the shipwreck while another 150 were rescued. (Reuters, Reporting by Ahmed Elumami Writing by Lisa Barrington Editing by Frances Kerry)

At least 79 people died when an overloaded ferry carrying families on an outing sank in the Tigris river in Mosul in northern Iraq, medical sources told Reuters on Thursday.Most of the casualties on the ferry were women and children who could not swim, said the head of Mosul's Civil Defence Authority Husam Khalil.He said the ferry had been loaded to several times its capacity. "It can normally carry 50 people. There were 250 on board before the incident," he said.Five ferry workers were arrested after late on Thursday, security sources said. Rescue workers were still looking for missing passengers.The boat was ferrying people to a man-made island used as a recreational area by families…

At least 42 people drowned when a ferry sank on Thursday in Tanzania's Lake Victoria and government officials feared the final death toll could be more than 200, a senior local official said.Ukerewe District Commissioner Colonel Lucas Magembe told Reuters that the rescue mission to find survivors from the disaster had been halted until dawn on Friday with 42 people confirmed dead.Initial estimates showed that the MV Nyerere was carrying more than 300 people on board.

Pirate attacks around South American and Caribbean waters are growing, and violence is increasingly used during robberies committed on vessels at anchor, a report showed on Wednesday. The Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) non-profit group recorded 71 incidents in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2017, a 163 percent increase over 2016. OBP said the majority of the attacks occurred in territorial waters, with around 59 percent of incidents involving robbery on yachts. Anchorages in Venezuela, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Colombia and St. Lucia were the regional hot spots during 2017, it said. "We have observed a significant increase in violent incidents and anchorage crime…

Most on board boat believed to be Pakistanis;ten bodies so far recovered, three survivors found. An estimated 90 migrants are feared to have drowned off the coast of Libya after a smuggler's boat capsized early on Friday, leaving three known survivors and 10 bodies washed up on shore, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said. Survivors told aid workers that most of the migrants on board were Pakistanis, who form a growing group heading to Italy from North Africa, IOM spokeswoman Olivia Headon said. "They have given an estimate of 90 people who drowned during the capsize, but we still need to verify the exact number of people who lost their lives during the tragedy," Headon, speaking from Tunis, told a Geneva news briefing.

More than 120 migrants are feared to have died at the weekend when the motor of their boat was stolen, causing it to sink, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, citing testimony from survivors brought to Italy. Two Sudanese men who arrived with around 1,000 other migrants at the Sicilian port of Palermo on Monday told IOM staff they left Libya in a rubber boat packed with 130 people, mainly Sudanese, IOM spokesman Flavio Di Giacomo said. After a few hours at sea, the men said a group of Libyans caught them up. "They described (the Libyans) as pirates, but they are basically traffickers," Di Giacomo said. "They stole the motor - something which has happened a few times recently - and at that point the boat started to take on water and sank," he said.

Six migrants died and up to 100 more were missing and feared dead after their rubber boat sank in the Mediterranean on Thursday, the president of the Italian unit of aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said. A British navy ship rescued 27 people and recovered six bodies about 20 miles from the coast of Libya early on Thursday morning, MSF Italy president Loris De Filippi said. The new disaster adds to a death toll which aid groups had put at 240 for the three days ending on Wednesday, as migrants continue to leave Libya despite rough seas. The migrants were transferred to the MSF ship Bourbon Argos, one of several aid agency vessels operating in the area. Survivors told staff that another 90 to 100 people had also been on board and had died.

Up to 500 migrants might have drowned in the Mediterranean last week when human traffickers crammed people onto an already overcrowded ship, causing it to sink, the U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday. Somalia's government said on Monday about 200 or more Somalis may have died in the tragedy while trying to cross illegally to Europe. After talking to survivors, the UNHCR agency said the overall death toll might have been much higher. "If confirmed, as many as 500 people may have lost their lives when a large ship went down in the Mediterranean Sea at an unknown location between Libya and Italy," the UNHCR said. The agency said the survivors - 37 men, three women and a three-year-old child - were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Greece on April 16.

A boat packed with mainly African migrants bound for Italy sank off the Libyan coast on Thursday and officials said up to 200 might have died. A security official in the western town of Zuwara, from where the overcrowded boat had set off, said there had been around 400 people on board. Many appeared to have been trapped in the hold when it capsized. By late in the evening, the Libyan coast guard rescued around 201, of which 147 were brought to a detention facility for illegal migrants in Sabratha, west of Tripoli, the official said, asking not to be named. Another local official and a journalist based in Zuwara confirmed the sinking but also had no information on casualties.

Hopes faded of finding more survivors on Thursday from a shipwreck in which 200 migrants are feared drowned, as rescue ships were called to the aid of more migrant boats in the same area of the Mediterranean. "We are witnessing a genocide caused by European selfishness," said Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando as the Irish navy ship LE Niamh docked in the port carrying some 370 survivors of Wednesday's disaster and 25 corpses, including three children. Orlando, speaking on Italian television as hearses arrived to take the bodies away, called on European leaders to do more to prevent such disasters and to allow more refugees to re-settle in their countries. After the survivors disembarked, some were escorted back on board to see if they could identify the dead children.

Ships carrying rescued migrants arrive in Italian ports; Eight more suspected of human trafficking detained in Sicily. As many as 5,000 migrants a week could arrive in Italy by sea from North African ports in the next five months unless something is done about the issue, according to an interior ministry projection. The figures, published on Thursday by the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero and confirmed by a ministry source, estimated that as many as 200,000 could arrive by the end of this year. Arrivals of migrants usually spike in the spring and summer months because of better weather in the Mediterranean but the situation is expected to worsen because of growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya, from where most of the migrants depart.

More than 700 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East may have drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean over the last week, bringing the death toll this year to almost 3,000, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Monday. In the worst incident, as many as 500 migrants are believed to have died after traffickers rammed their ship off Malta's coast last week, an event that only came to light this weekend in testimony from two of nine survivors. The survivors said the traffickers ordered the migrants to change vessels in the middle of the Mediterranean. The migrants refused, leading to a confrontation that ended when traffickers rammed the ship carrying the migrants, causing it to sink, IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told Reuters in Geneva.

A boat packed with up to 700 African migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya on Wednesday and many were feared dead, officials and aid agencies said. The humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres, whose rescue ship Dignity 1 was in the area, said in a tweet that the boat was believed to have been carrying about 700 people. "The team on the Dignity 1 can confirm that there have tragically been many deaths but does not have figures at this stage," one of its tweets said. In another tweet, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said about 600 people were on board, that about 250 had been rescued and 16 bodies recovered so far.

Two people drowned and four were missing at sea and feared dead after two merchant ships collided in rough seas off the Italian coast on Sunday, Italian officials said. A Turkish ship with 11 crew members sank after the collision with a vessel carrying a Belize flag in poor visibility a mile from the Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna, a coastguard official said. The mayor of Ravenna Fabrizio Matteucci said on Italian state television that the dead and missing were all Turkish men from the ship Gokbel which sank after the collision with the Belize-flagged Lady Aziza at around 0800 GMT. "There are two victims and four missing," he said…

A Maltese patrol boat rescued about 80 migrants in a drifting dinghy off the island early on Thursday, but another 20 people were feared to have perished. Along with southern Italy, Malta is one of the main points of arrival for migrants attempting the crossing from North Africa into Europe. A government spokesman in the Maltese capital Valletta said the migrants appeared to have been in the dinghy for a number of days and needed medical treatment. He said they had told their rescuers that there had been 100 people in the boat, but 20 had died. The nationality of the migrants is not yet known. Malta has been pressing the European Union and Mediterranean rim states to cooperate in efforts to stem migrant arrivals and help send them back home, or integrate into European countries.