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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDozens of kids die as boat tragedies claim up to 700 lives
A week of shipwrecks and death in the Mediterranean culminated Sunday with harrowing testimony from migrant survivors who said another 500 people including 40 children had drowned, bringing the number of feared dead to 700.
Dozens missing in fresh migrant shipwreck: rescuers (27 May 16)
Over 100 feared dead in new migrant boat tragedies in Med (27 May 16)
Italy says another 3,000 migrants rescued off Libya (25 May 16)
Survivors brought to safety in the Italian ports of Taranto and Pozzallo told the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) and Save the Children how their boat sank on Thursday morning after a high-seas drama which saw one woman decapitated.
"We'll never know the exact number, we'll never know their identities," said the UNHCR's spokeswoman Carlotta Sami. But multiple witness reports suggested over 500 people had drowned in that shipwreck alone.
With some 100 others missing after a boat sank Wednesday, and 45 bodies recovered from a wreck that happened Friday, the UNHCR said it feared up to 700 people had drowned in total this week.
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http://www.thelocal.it/20160529/forty-children-drown-as-shipwrecks-claim-up-to-700-survivors-say
These posts about the horrific loss of lives at sea of desperate immigrants, always get ignored
If you use social media as a measure of shock, outrage, sorrow and other reactions to disasters, the loss of 700 lives on one side of our planet pales in comparison to the loss of 50 lives in an urban nightclub shooting.
Or the light sentence handed down to a rapist.
Or even the shooting of a gorilla in a zoo.
The mass media is largely responsible for the disproportionate reactions; where is their non-stop, breathless coverage of the loss of so many children, women and men? One news cycle, and they move on. OK, these other stories are closer to home, but why are refugee lives worth so little when compared to American lives?
Beam me up, Scotty. This planet sucks!
My Good Babushka
(2,710 posts)at the expense of these refugees who do not deserve this horrible fate.
cali
(114,904 posts)Yes, many of the refugees are Libyans