Italian prosecutors have revealed that people smugglers charged migrants as much as 8,000 euros each for a voyage that led to the deaths of dozens of people as a fishing boat sank off the Italian coast.
At least 67 people are confirmed to have died, 16 of them children, in the shipwreck, which took place just off the coast of Steccato di Cutro in south-eastern Italy when a sailboat that originated in Turkey sank due to rough seas on Sunday.
The Crotone prosecutor’s office has announced that it has identified three men, a Turkish national and two Pakistanis, who are suspected of being people smugglers connected to the voyage and that those on board paid at least €8,000 (£7,033/$8,461) each for the deadly journey, Il Giornale reports.
“About four hours before the impact of the boat, one of the two Pakistanis went down in the hold and told us that after three hours we would arrive at our destination. He came back an hour before the crash telling us to take our luggage and get ready to get off and that we were almost there,” one of the survivors of the shipwreck said.
“I had time to grab my nephew and get on deck after which the boat broke and the water started to enter. When I went up without going back down, there were about 120 people between women and children,” a survivor said.
Survivors added that when the smugglers realised the ship was going to sink, they fled in an inflatable dinghy, with one claiming that one of the smugglers had a tattoo on his cheek.
The incident is just the latest that has seen people smugglers lead migrants to their deaths in recent months while making the dangerous voyage across the sea to Italy.
In December, a two-year-old girl died after a migrant boat sank off the coast of North Africa while heading to Italy with 43 people on board. The girl died hours after being rescued while her brother managed to survive despite suffering from drowning syndrome.
Just weeks later in January, a 14-month-old baby was among three who died off the Italian island of Lampedusa due to yet another shipwreck.
People smugglers have led at least 29,000 people to their deaths trying to reach Europe since 2014, according to figures released by the United Nations International Organisation for Migration (IOM) last October, although some believe the number may be an underestimate.