Italy 'ghost ship' migrants paid up to $8,000 each to traffickers
Corigliano (Italy) (AFP) - Italian authorities disembarked 360 cold and hungry migrants Saturday from a ship left adrift by its crew off the country's coast, with some having paid up to $8,000 to traffickers for the perilous journey.
It was the latest in a wave of such incidents involving migrants crossing the Mediterranean to flee conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa and attempting to reach Europe by sea.
The migrants have been preyed upon by people smugglers, who have recently resorted to a new tactic of abandoning "ghost ships" full of desperate travellers off European coasts.
Women and children were among hundreds of migrants left stranded aboard the Ezadeen, which docked in the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro around 11:00 pm Friday after a delicate operation by the Italian navy to take control of the ageing vessel.
Its arrival was one in a series of maritime dramas that Italy has grappled with in recent days, and which have brought some 2,000 rescued migrants to Italian soil.
Italian prefect Gianfranco Tomao told reporters migrants can now pay traffickers between $4,000 and $8,000 for passage to Europe. ...
More than 170,000 people have been rescued at sea by Italy in the last 14 months, and hundreds, possibly thousands, have perished trying to make the crossing.
The International Organisation for Migration estimated Friday that people smugglers grossed over $1 million (830,000 euros) on just one of this week's abandoned ships alone.
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