NIGERIA
Grim Confusion
Italian prosecutors are working to determine whether 26 young Nigerian women and girls whose bodies were retrieved from the Mediterranean Sea over the weekend were the victims of homicide.
Estimated to be between the ages of 14 and 18, the young women were likely being transported by a sex-trafficking ring, the New York Times reported. The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that 80 percent of Nigerian girls arriving in Italy by sea may be victims of trafficking.
The women apparently departed from Warshefana, near Tripoli, Libya, late last week. The boats carrying them capsized in bad weather. The Spanish vessel Cantabria saved 64 other migrants on Friday, while some 400 landed in Salerno on Sunday along with the bodies of the dead women.
Around 150,000 migrants have entered Europe by sea so far in 2017, mostly arriving in Italy. That’s less than half of the more than 330,000 that arrived over the same period last year. But nearly 3,000 people have died, compared with 4,150 in the first 10 months of 2016.
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