Italian coastguard saves 900 migrants after smugglers abandon ship

Italy’s Coast Guard said Wednesday it had narrowly averted a catastrophe after people smugglers set a cargo ship with 900 people on board on a collision course with the country’s rocky southern shoreline. In a tweet to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the coastguard revealed that the ship’s engine had been locked on with the steering set on a direction that would have meant it would have crashed ashore somewhere in the Puglia region on the “heel” of Italy. The Coast Guard scrambled two helicopters overnight after realising that the ship, the Moldovan-registered Blue Sky M, was headed for disaster.

Civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya have swelled the number of people crossing the Mediterannean in rickety boats this year, often bound for Italy and Greece.

Reuters reports

Six Coast Guard officers boarded the vessel and, after some frantic moments, were able to unlock the engines and bring the boat under control. The migrants on board, mostly from Syria and including a heavily pregnant woman whose waters broke during the drama, were taken to the port of Gallipoli as an inquest began into how the alarming incident had occurred.

World Italy migrants