Ezadeen with 450 migrants on board, off the southern coast of Italy, Photo: Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Italian Coast Guard has taken control of Ezadeen, a 240′ long, 50 year old cattle carrier registered in Sierra Leone, with 450 migrants aboard off the southern coast of Italy, near Crotone. The crew of the ship abandoned it and its passengers. The ship had been put on a collision course with the Italian coast but had run out of fuel and was left drifting. Some reports say that the migrants aboard the ship had also run out of food and water. In high winds and rough seas, the Italian Coast Guard dropped rescue personnel on board the ship by helicopter. The first vessel to reach the Ezadeen was an Icelandic Coast Guard patrol boat participating in joint exercises. After several hours of effort in high seas, the Icelandic vessel was able to secure a tow line to the Ezadeen, and begin to tow the ship toward the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro.
This is the second migrant ship to be left abandoned off the Italian coast in the last three days. As we posted on Wednesday, the Italian Coast Guard intercepted the Blue Sky M, a freighter with more than 700 migrants aboard which had been left heading for the Italian coast under autopilot aft the crew of traffickers abandoned the ship. The ship was taken under tow and safely taken to the Italian port of Gallipoli.
As reported by the New York Times:
The use of larger vessels seems to mark a new tactic by traffickers in the Mediterranean, seeking ever greater profits from people desperate to flee war zones, chaos and repressive regimes and prepared to pay thousands a dollars each to do so.
“We are aware of at least four incidents in the last two months where people smugglers cram hundreds of migrants and refugees in big cargo boats and then send them uncrewed in the direction of Italy,” said William Spindler, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency.
“In the past they did exactly the same thing with smaller vessels like fishing vessels and dinghies,” he told BBC radio. “But it seems now they are going for bigger boats like cargo boasts,” and “the money involved is huge.”
The danger, he said, was that, with no one at the tiller, the vessels could “crash against the coast, and many lives will be lost.”
Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.
Was just on PBS news a few hoirs ago.
But drifting?
By the photo, it has its anchor out, you can see the chain. Same photo PBS had. Unless it was dropped after boarding.
So now Italy has to figure out what to do with them.
What is next?
Unscheduled, no signal, sink it?
Don’t think it won’t come to that one day!
BBC:
Traffickers ‘made $3m’ on Italy ship
Italian police believe human traffickers made some $3m from 359 illegal migrants found abandoned on a cargo ship in the Mediterranean.
The police chief of Cosenza province, Luigi Liguori, said each migrant had paid between $4,000 and $8,000 to board the ship.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30669136
What port did it clear out of with such a cargo? Unlike fishing boats, a vessel of this size needs to complete customs formalities and in most countries is subject to port state control. There has to have been collaboration or at least gross negligence by some government agency.