A woman migrant was decapitated in a horrific accident as a boat carrying 500 people started to sink in the Mediterranean.
The
vessel, which had no engine, was being towed by another smuggling boat -
also with hundreds on board - when it started to take on water off the
south coast of Italy on Thursday.
Survivors
of the disaster, which claimed more than 500 lives, have told of
horrific scenes as refugees started to panic and jump into the sea.
Others
told how the Sudanese captain of the first boat then cut the tow rope
which snapped back and decapitated a woman - though it is not clear
which of the two boats she was on. The second boat quickly sank, taking
those packed tightly into the hold down with it.
According to Dailymail, the
tragedy happened as it emerged that more than 700 migrants - including
40 children - have been killed in shipwreck disasters in under a week.
Hundreds
drowned between Wednesday and Friday when their boats all overturned
off southern Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.
Describing
Thursday's shipwreck, Carlotta Sami, the spokeswoman for the UN's
refugee agency UNHRC, said: 'We'll never know the exact number, we'll
never know their identity, but survivors tell that over 500 human beings
died.'
Giovanna
Di Benedetto, Save the Children's spokesperson in Sicily, told AFP it
was impossible to verify the numbers involved but survivors of
Thursday's wreck spoke of around 1,100 people setting out from Libya on
Wednesday in two fishing boats and a dinghy.
'The
first boat, carrying some 500 people, was reportedly towing the second,
which was carrying another 500. But the second boat began to sink. Some
people tried to swim to the first boat, others held onto the rope
linking the vessels,' she said.
The Sudanese
captain was arrested on his arrival in Pozzallo along with three other
suspected people traffickers, Italian media reports said.
'We
tried everything to stop the water, to bail it out of the boat,' a
Nigerian girl told cultural mediators, according to La Stampa daily.
'We
used our hands, plastic glasses. For two hours we fought against the
water but it was useless. It began to flood the boat, and those below
deck had no chance. Women, men, children, many children, were trapped,
and drowned,' she said.
One
survivor from Eritrea, 21-year-old Filmon Selomon, told The Associated
Press that water started seeping into the second boat after three hours
of navigation, and that the migrants tried vainly to get the water out
of the sinking boat.
Culled from DailyMail UK
Picture credit: Dailymail and Reuters
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