Lampedusa Death Toll Rises to 232

Italian divers have recovered dozens more bodies from a boat carrying African migrants that sank near Italy’s Lampedusa last week.

A boat packed with around 500 Eritrean and Somali migrants capsized and sank near Lampedusa on Thursday after its captain set fire to a T-shirt to signal distress to coast guards, sparking panic on board.

The official death toll is now 232, the BBC informs.

There were 155 survivors of the accident, which happened about 1km (half a mile) offshore.

The operation to recover bodies from the hull was abandoned for the night, but will resume on Tuesday.

Lampedusa, not far from Sicily and the closest Italian island to Africa, has become a destination for tens of thousands of refugees seeking to enter European Union countries.

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