Bodies of refugees wash ashore in Sicily

The Italian coast guard on Saturday found the bodies of six migrants on a tourist beach in Sicily while nearly 100 others, reported to be Syrians and some Egyptians, were rescued in the latest attempt by refugees to escape Syria's two-year-old civil war.

The United Nations estimates at least 6,000 people flee Syria every day, with nearly 1.5 million refugees since the war began.

"We were alerted just after 5:30 am (2130 EST) that a boat had run aground across from a beach resort," said a spokesman for the port authority Roberto D'Arrigo. Catania is the island's second-largest city and a popular tourist destination.
 

D'Arrigo said that most of the migrants jumped into the water when they saw the coastline. Two bodies were found washed ashore on the beach while four others were recovered from the sea by rescuers. They apparently did not know how to swim and drowned, authorities said.

D'Arrigo said that all the passengers were young adults and one of the deceased was a teenager. A 3-year-old child suffering from dehydration and a pregnant woman who made it ashore were hospitalized.
 

Most of the surviving migrants were on shore when the authorities arrived, D'Arrigo said, indicating that a total of "91 migrants, Syrians and Egyptians" were saved and being identified by authorities. Earlier investigators had said the 59-foot boat was carrying around 120 people.

Dario Monteforte, owner of the Lido Verde which alerted authorities, told Sky TG24 television that he "saw a crowd of youths on the beach running toward the road." Monteforte, visibly shaken, has closed his establishment for the weekend.

"Something has to be done. This is really an unending tragedy," he said of the plight of thousands of desperate migrants in unsafe boats who seek to reach Italian shores each year.

Another group of about 100 migrants, mostly Syrian families, were rescued overnight Wednesday off the coast of Calabria on the Italian mainland. They had left Syria two weeks earlier and had to change boats several times before being left adrift aboard a 35-foot vessel.

The conflict in Syria has left more than 100,000 people dead since it began in March 2011. The United Nations estimates at least 6,000 people flee Syria every day, with nearly 1.5 million refugees since the war began.

African migrants normally reach Sicily's more southern coast or the island of Lampedusa to the south, only 70 miles from Tunisia in North Africa. D'Arrigo said a migrant boat had never previously put into Catania -- halfway up Sicily's eastern coast, leading D'Arrigo to believe the boat had lost its way.

Al Jazeera and wire services