It was the cries of children and the moment they decided they must save themselves that haunt the survivors of a shipwreck that claimed hundreds of lives.
Two Eritreans who arrived safely in Sicily told The Associated Press yesterday how the sea kept seeping into their rickety fishing boat despite all efforts to bail the water out. Eventually, the sea prevailed.
Between 400 and 550 on their smugglers' boat didn't make it, part of the estimated 700 migrants who perished in Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks over three days last week in the deadliest known tally in over a year, as calm weather and sunny skies increased smuggling crossings from Libya.
"When the morning came, I saw how the children were crying and the women," Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean, told the AP through an interpreter. "At this point I only tried to pray. Everybody was trying to take the water out of boat."
The rickety wooden boat without an engine was being towed by another smugglers' boat laden with hundreds of other migrants, signaling the increasing desperation of the smugglers. Once the second boat started sinking Thursday, the commander on the first boat ordered the tow line cut, apparently to keep his boat from sinking as well, according to Italian police interviews of survivors.
The line, at full tension, whipped back, fatally slashing the neck of a female migrant, police said.
By then, Filmon Selomon, a 21-year-old Eritrean, had plunged into the sea. He told the Associated Press that knew he could only save himself.
"I started to cry when I saw the situation and when I found the ship without an engine. There were many women and children," he said. "Water was coming in from everywhere, top, bottom."
Tekle described people holding onto each other, some dragging others underwater, as the boat was sinking. "For me, it was very shocking," he said through an interpreter.
Police put the number below deck at 300 and said they all perished as the boat sank. Some 200 more plunged into the sea, but only 90 of those were saved, along with 500 from the first boat.
