Post date: Oct 07, 2013 12:39:58 PM
A diver involved in the search for migrant bodies off the coast of Lampedusa says it will be impossible to recover all of them.
LAMPEDUSA, ITALY (OCTOBER 7, 2013) (REUTERS) - A Italian search teams have recovered 194 bodies after a migrant boat sank off the southern island of Lampedusa last week, with divers working to bring up as many as possible from the wreck ahead of expected bad weather, officials said on Monday (October 7).
A diver involved in the search for migrant bodies said it will be impossible to find all the remains.Sergeant Riccardo Nobile, a diver for the Guardia di Finanza customs and border police, appeared visibly strained as he recounted his experience diving around the shipwreck some 30 miles off shore.
"We found a whole row of bodies that were inside and outside of the wreck. We tried to recover those that we could and we pulled them up in the time that we had remaining, but it was very little time."
Nobile diver explained that once divers are down next at the ship they have only a few minutes of dive time remaining before they need to come up again.
"The dives on the bottom last only for a few minutes, only five, six, seven minutes otherwise we go outside our safety guidelines. We have a small amount of time to work," he explained.
Italian search teams have so far recovered 194 bodies and divers are now working to bring up as many as possible from the wreck ahead of expected bad weather.
"The bodies are still in good state as only a small amount of time has passed. They are scattered in different areas inside and outside the boat," Nobile said.
"Some we have found with their arms outstretched. We try not to notice this kind of thing too much because otherwise our job is too difficult. We are doing our best as fast as we can."
Most of the bodies that fell off the ship are believed to have been recovered with fears that mainly the bodies of women and children will now be found, trapped inside the boat.
"We have now removed all the bodies that were around and ontop of the wreck, now we need to work inside and try and free all those bodies. This will make the operation even more difficult," said Nobile.
"We can see a woman's hair floating out of a broken porthole but we haven't been able to get to her."
Nobile was speaking as a further two bodies were found at the wreck site, both female.
"The more we move forward, the numbers will reduce as it will be increasingly more difficult to recover these bodies," Nobile said.
"We have to check where all these remaining bodies are, the sea's current will play a part," he said.
"It will be difficult, impossible, to recover everyone."
The boat, carrying around 500 mainly Eritrean and Somali migrants, capsized and sank on Thursday (October 3), throwing hundreds into the water. Only 155 survivors were rescued and more than 300 are feared dead.
After rough seas at the weekend held up recovery of scores of bodies trapped in the submerged wreck, the weather on Monday morning was fine. But officials said stormy conditions were expected later in the day.
Lampedusa, a tiny island halfway between Sicily and Tunisia, has become one of the main entry points for clandestine migrants from Africa into southern Europe, with tens of thousands arriving in unsafe and overcrowded boats over recent years.
Thousands have died attempting the perilous crossing, but last week's disaster was one of the worst single incidents in the decades-long problem.