Migrants give thanks after ‘ghost ship’ Ezadeen rescued in Mediterranean

The man on crutches from Homs was in no doubt about the message he wanted to send to the world.

While he waited to be handed a bag of food and a bottle of water in this southern Italian port, he turned to the handful of reporters left on the quayside and shouted in a loud and resonant voice: “Italia – good. Thank you, Italia. Thank you very much. All Italia … Good!”

Minutes before, he and 359 others had disembarked from the Ezadeen, a Sierra Leone-registered livestock freighter. Police said on Saturday that the number included 54 women, several pregnant, and 74 minors, including eight who were unaccompanied.

As the Tyr – the Icelandic coastguard patrol vessel that had towed the ship to safety – pulled it alongside the wharf, a restrained cheer rippled from bow to stern of the Ezadeen.

Double lines of metal bars run either side of the battered old freighter to prevent cattle and sheep from falling overboard. Those of the Ezadeen’s human cargo who were still massed in the livestock hold waved and grinned through the bars. If ever a moment captured the indignities suffered by those who try to flee across the Mediterranean to safety or a better life, this was it.

The first sign of the Ezadeen’s arrival had come more than an hour earlier when the Tyr’s three masthead lights, signalling a long tow, appeared beyond the mole that forms one half of the entrance to Corigliano’s spacious harbour. The Icelandic vessel soon became a dramatic sight – its engine exhaust smoke lit by a searchlight facing aft and trailing behind it like a silvery pennant.   Read More at Guardian