250 African migrants feared drowned in Mediterranean sea

Around 250 African migrants are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean sea after a rescue boat found two partially submerged rubber dinghies off Libya. Laura Lanuza of Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms said in Rome that its boat Golfo Azzuro had recovered five floating corpses close to the dinghies, about 15 miles off the Libyan coast. She told news agency AFP that these dinghies would have been full of people. She added that they would typically have been carrying



120-140 migrants each.

Lanuza said, the bodies recovered were African men with estimated ages of between 16 and 25. They had drowned, apparently 24 hours prior to being discovered shortly after dawn on Thursday north of the Libyan port of Sabrata. Over 5,000 people have been picked up by rescue boats since Sunday, bringing the number brought to Italy since the start of 2017 to over 21,000, a sharp rise on the same period in previous years.