Police on Tuesday were holding
two alleged smugglers from Senegal at the centre of Monday's
double migrant boat tragedy in the Sicilian channel that took
place just as rescue operations were being carried out.
Babacar Gueye, 25, and Sekou Sara Elhadji, 29, both from
Senegal, were at the helm of two dinghies respectively holding
107 and 111 migrants that had been intercepted off the southern
coast of Sicily when the latest in a long string of boat
disasters occurred.
Gueye's boat was intercepted by the Maltese petrol tanker
Norient Star but suffered a puncture and deflated during
berthing, flipping the migrants on board - who were all
reportedly wearing life jackets - into the water.
Three people died as a result of the incident and a further
two were still missing.
Separately, four people fell from Elhadji's boat while
trying to climb a rope ladder to safety after being rescued by
the motorboat Peruvian Refeer and were pulled underwater by
strong currents.
Their bodies have not been found.
Gueye and Elhadji both reprtedly offered to drive the boats
on behalf of traffickers as they didn't have the resources to
pay for their own crossing.
Italy is struggling to cope with a massive increase
this year in the already big flow of migrants who attempt the
hazardous crossing from North Africa.
Almost 40,000 migrants landed on Italy's shores in the
first five months of this year - almost as many as the total for
all of 2013.
Many thousands more have arrived so far in June after being
rescued by Italian authorities as part of the Mare Nostrum (Our
Sea) Operation launched after around 400 people were killed on
two migrant-boat disasters in October.
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