13 dead as migrant boat runs aground off Sicily
September 30, 2013
ROME (AP) — The Italian coast guard says 13 bodies have washed up on a Sicilian beach after a boat carrying some 200 migrants ran aground as it approached the shore.
Coast guard official Marco Di Milla says rescue boats and divers are in the waters off Scicli, on Sicily's southern coast, looking for other possible bodies.
The nationalities of the migrants aren't known, but the dead were all male.
Di Milla reported witnesses saying that many of the migrants aboard the ship swam ashore and ran away.
Sicily and its islands are the frequent destination for smugglers' boats leaving from Tunisia or Libya with would-be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
In recent weeks there has also been an upswing in the number of Syrian migrants arriving.
