2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15
Italian authorities have launched an investigation into the deaths of 26 African teenagers whose bodies were recovered this Sunday in the Mediterranean Sea, along one of the routes from Africa to Europe used by migrant smugglers.
According to the BBC, there are suspicions that the girls, ranging in age from 14 to 18, have been sexually assaulted and killed. Investigators have five immigrants in their custody to question them about the possible crime.
The bodies of 23 of the young women, who came from Niger and Nigeria, were found in a partially sunk rubber boat, to which other minors clung and in which 64 more people were coming, said the police chief of Salerno, Lorena Ciccotti, the port city in southern Italy where the bodies arrived.
Autopsies are expected to take place on Tuesday to determine the cause of death and whether they were sexually abused. Meanwhile, their bodies are kept refrigerated in a section of the Spanish Navy ship Cantabria that rescued the bodies of the sea, as well as the survivors of this and other shipwrecks.
In total, the Spanish ship removed 90 women and 52 minors, including a newborn, from the waters of the Mediterranean over the weekend.
The Italian government delegate in the area, Salvatore Malfi called the discovery a tragedy and said that the police "will need to see if there are suspects to focus on or if the murder investigation will proceed against unknown persons."
According to what she told NPR, the young women are suspected of drowning after being thrown into the water.
This weekend alone, a total of 400 people were rescued from the waters of the sea in four rescue operations.
The central Mediterranean has become in recent years a busy route used by mafias that take advantage of the political instability that Libya has experienced since the fall of the Muammar Gaddafi regime to launch from its precarious shores loaded with emigrants who dream of reaching Europe.
According to the International Organization for Migration, a total of 2,839 migrants have died along the central Mediterranean route since the beginning of this year.
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