Italian Navy Raises Migrant Ship

The Italian Navy has raised a migrant vessel that sank off Sicily in April 2015 causing around 800 deaths.

The boat capsized 193 kilometers south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, about 85 miles northeast of Libya, when its occupants moved to one side as a merchant ship approached. Only 28 people are believed to have survived.

The Italian Navy found the wreck of the 25-meter (82-foot) vessel a month after it sank and has already recovered over 100 bodies, but hundreds more, including many women and children, are believed to be locked below the vessel’s deck.

Using a complicated pulley system and robotic arms to ensure that none of the bodies were lost, the Navy lifted the vessel from a depth of 370 meters (1,214 feet). It is now being taken to Sicily in refrigerated transport 30-metre-long so that scientists can try to identify the victims. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has indicated that the nation will attempt to identify and then bury all the bodies found.

Around 2,500 people have died this year attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea according to the International Organization for Migration.