Suspected Lampedusa shipwreck captain arrested

Italian authorities Tuesday detained a 35-year-old Tunisian man suspected of being the captain of a boat that was carrying African migrants and sank off the tiny island of Lampedusa last week. Divers, meanwhile, recovered dozens more bodies from the wreckage, raising the death toll to 275.

Only 155 people of the estimated 500 aboard the capsized vessel survived the sinking. Most if not all of the survivors are from Eritrea.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East try to cross the Mediterranean Sea each year, seeking a better life in Europe, but the journey is fraught with danger.

In the Lampedusa incident, survivors have been quoted as saying that the ship began taking on water just a few hundred yards from the Italian coast. They said three fishing boats ignored their pleas for help, and passengers ignited a blanket in the hopes of alerting the coast guard, but to no avail.

The latest case has one of the highest verified death tolls in the history of migrant ship disasters in the Mediterranean. Italy has called on the European Union to provide more assistance in dealing with the surge in refugees who are fleeing from crises in North Africa and the Middle East at the rate of tens of thousands a year.

Prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, said they had detained the suspected captain, a Tunisian who was transferred from Lampedusa to Agrigento under police custody aboard a ferry. He faces charges of aiding illegal immigration, and multiple counts of homicide.

Coast Guard Commander Filippo Marini said 43 bodies were recovered from within the ship's hold, while one was spotted by a helicopter and was floating near the wreck, before the operation was suspended due to darkness.

A disproportionate number of the dead are women: So far the bodies of 81 women have been recovered, while only six of the survivors were female. Eight of the dead are children.

"Inside, we're finding more women than men," Gianni Dessi, the coast guard official coordinating the diving operation, told Italian news channel Sky TG24. "We hope not, but we expect to find more children." He said the scene inside the ship's hold is tough for divers, but that "maintaining cold blood is a quality that helps the operation."

The survivors were helping identify the bodies, mostly through photographs. In some cases, divers also have recovered documents.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press