The two boats they had been in were barely seaworthy, the tug's Montenegrin captain told said. The discarded coats, he said, would be thrown away. So far this year as many as 900 have lost their lives.
The group, which included 31 women, was composed mostly of Nigerians and Gambians. As they filed off the boat, representatives of the Italian Red Cross did a quick visual inspection, checking for fever, scabies, any sign of illness. One woman, they discovered, was two months pregnant.
Timothy, in his mid-20s from Nigeria, told me he left his home 9 months ago. He paid human traffickers in Tripoli 1,000 Libyan dinars, more than $700, for the voyage. For him, it's a fortune.
I asked 28-year-old Jibril, from Gambia, why he had left his home. "It's not like in Europe," he told me. "After 20, 25 years, you have to make a future for yourself. But in Gambia, I couldn't. My family, they don¹t have nothing. They are poor people."
Mercy, from Kano in northern Nigeria, seemed shell-shocked. In a faint voice she told me she had left Kano because her family feared that she would be taken by Boko Haram.
"I was scared," 25-year-old Al-Haji from Gambia told me about the journey from Libya. "I was taking a big risk. Either I enter Europe or I die."
Another man, from Liberia, told me he had lived and worked in Libya for 15 years, but was terrified at the prospect of ISIS gaining even more territory.
An Egyptian translator working for the Italian police told me they had information that a large group of Syrians were gathered in a Tripoli warehouse, and were expected to make the journey to Italy in the coming days.
-As reported by: Ben Wedeman, CNN international correspondent
-Culled from: CNN.com
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