By Europe correspondent Mary Gearin, wires Friday 17 Apr 2015
Photo: Migrants disembark from a rescue vessel as they arrive in the Italian port of Augusta in Sicily. (AFP: Giovanni Isolino)
Italian police have arrested 15 Muslim migrants suspected of throwing a dozen Christians from a boat in the Mediterranean.
Police in the Sicilian capital Palermo said they had arrested the men on Thursday after survivors reported they had thrown 12 people from Nigeria and Ghana to their deaths.
The men were charged with multiple homicide motivated by religious hatred.
"The motive for the resentment was traced to their faiths," the police said in a statement.
The boat, which was carrying 105 passengers, had set out from the Libyan coast on Tuesday.
Witnesses allege a fight broke out and 15 Muslim men, from the Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal and Guinea, threw the Christians into the Strait of Sicily.
"The threats then materialised and 12 people, all Nigerian and Ghanaian, are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean," police said.
The remaining passengers were rescued and brought to Palermo, where the 15 alleged attackers were arrested.
Police said the survivors told a "dreadful" story of their struggle to escape with their lives "by forcefully resisting attempts to drown them, forming a veritable human chain in some cases".
Almost 10,000 people have been rescued while trying to reach the Italian coast in the past week, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Dozens 'missing' in new boat sinking
In a separate incident, as many as 41 migrants were feared drowned after their boat sank in the Mediterranean, Italian media reported.
Mission rethink 'could cost lives'
The end of the controversial Italian navy operation rescuing thousands of asylum seekers in the Mediterranean is likely to result in many more deaths at sea, according to human rights groups.Four survivors told Italian police and humanitarian organisations that their inflatable vessel sank not long after leaving the coast of Libya for Europe with 45 people on board.
The four — a Ghanaian, two Nigerians, and a man from Niger — arrived in Trapani in Sicily on Thursday with 600 other migrants picked up by the Italian navy and coastguards.
The incident comes four days after a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Libya, in which 400 people are believed to have died.
Around 20,000 migrants have reached the Italian coast this year, the (IOM) estimates, fewer than arrived in the first four months of last year, but the number of deaths has risen almost nine-fold.
Italy pleaded for more help from other European Union countries on Thursday to rescue the migrants risking their lives to reach Europe and to share the burden of accommodating the arrivals.
"Ninety per cent of the cost of the patrol and sea rescue operations are falling on our shoulders," foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni told the daily Corriere della Sera.
"And then there is the difficult issue of knowing where to send those rescued at sea — to the nearest port? To the country where their boat came from?
"The EU has to respond clearly to these questions."
ABC/wires
