Italy migrant boat shipwreck: Whole families reportedly among victims who paid $8K each for "voyage of death"
CBSN
Crotone, Italy — Rescue teams pulled another body from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy's latest migration tragedy to 64, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) each for the "voyage of death" from Turkey to Italy. Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action to respond to the migration crisis, insisting that only way to deal with it seriously and humanely is to stop migrants from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings. "The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying," she told RAI state television late Monday. At least 64 people, including eight children, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into the shoals just a few hundred meters off Italy's Calabrian coast and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but dozens more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.
Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled one body from the sea on Tuesday morning, bringing the death toll to 64, said Andrea Mortato, of the firefighter divers unit.
Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck. Italy's customs police said in a statement that crossing organizers charged 8,000 euros each for the "voyage of death."
A British-Mexican man who says he was targeted for being gay and arrested on false drug charges in Qatar has been given a suspended six-month jail sentence, a fine amounting to about $2,700, and a deportation order by a court in the Arab nation, which is a vital U.S. ally in the Middle East, according to his family and Mexican officials.
An Israeli strike early Thursday on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed more than 30 people, including 23 women and children, according to local health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The hospital treating victims said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike, according to Agence France-Presse. But a U.N. official tells the Reuters news agency the death toll is between 35 and 45, though it still can't confirm any numbers.
Jerusalem — Thousands of Israeli nationalists marched Wednesday through east Jerusalem as authorities deployed police with tensions sky-high nearly eight months into the Gaza war. That war appeared to be intensifying in Gaza and the far-right nationalists staged their annual march – long deemed a provocation by Palestinians – in Jerusalem.
The world has now marked one full year of back-to-back monthly heat records, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced on Wednesday. It said last month was the hottest May in recorded history — the 12th consecutive month in which the monthly high temperature record was broken.
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Seoul, South Korea — South Korea on Tuesday took steps to suspend a contentious military agreement with North Korea and resume front-line military activities, as tension between the rivals rises over the North's recent launch of trash-carrying balloons. North Korea didn't immediately respond, but South Korea's resumption of firing exercises or propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts will likely prompt North Korea to take similar or stronger steps along the rivals' heavily militarized border.
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