BRINDISI // Italian sailors on Friday took control of a crewless merchant ship drifting in rough seas with 450 migrants on board.
Six coastguard officers were lowered from a helicopter on to the deck of the ship as it floated about 40 kilometres off Crotone on Italy’s heel, the navy said.
It marked the second such drama in days for Italy, which is struggling with a record wave of migrants making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. On Wednesday, the navy rescued another crewless “ghost” ship with nearly 800 migrants on board.
Friday’s rescue bid involved the 73-metre livestock carrier the Ezadeen, which was meant to be travelling between Famagusta in northern Turkish-controlled Cyprus and the southern French port of Sete, the navy said.
A shipping website, however, said the Sierra Leone-registered vessel had begun its voyage in the Syrian port of Tartus. Thousands of the refugees who have ended up in Italy this year had fled the war-torn country, but most have come via North Africa.
Prior to apparently running of fuel, the almost 50-year-old ship had been moving at a brisk seven knots and had been spotted by a coastguard plane 120km offshore shortly after nightfall.
A woman refugee on board was able to operate the ship’s radio and told the coastguard that the crew had jumped ship, Italian navy spokesman Captain Filippo Marini said.
The coastguard asked for assistance from the Icelandic patrol boat Tyr, which was in the area on a mission with Frontex, the European Union’s border agency.
The Tyr was able to draw alongside the runaway ship, but the weather conditions made boarding impossible.
The Icelandic vessel had three doctors on board who were waiting to be winched on to the merchant ship by helicopter to treat any unwell passengers.
On Wednesday Italian sailors intercepted a freighter carrying nearly 770 migrants which had been drifting towards the rocks off Italy’s south-eastern shore on autopilot, abandoned by the people smugglers who had steered it from Turkey via Greek waters.
Increasingly, migrant traffickers appear to have decided that the best way to get their human cargoes to Europe is to put to sea and then abandon the boats.
Since the onset of winter they have been using bigger boats than the converted fishing boats and dinghies they previously favoured.
The migrant boat dramas have come as Italy grapples with the aftermath of the Norman Atlantic ferry disaster in which at least 13 people died following a fire that broke out before dawn on Sunday in waters off Albania.
The ferry was towed into the Italian port of Brindisi on Friday as investigators try to determine if there are any more bodies on board.
A prosecutor in Bari ordered the stricken ferry be brought back to Italy, citing fears that there may be dead illegal immigrants or passengers who died in their cabins still aboard the vessel.
Given uncertainty over the total number of passengers, Italian authorities are warning that the death toll may rise.
Officials say 477 people were rescued in a dramatic offshore operation. However, the prosecutor, Giuseppe Volpe, said that almost 500 people may have been aboard, far above the 474 officially on the manifest.
* Agence France-Presse