NATO has categorically rejected accusations Monday that he had refused to rescue African immigrants in late March are on a boat drifting between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa AFP. 61 people were thus left to die in the Mediterranean. Despite the warning signals issued by the Italian coast and contact the ship by a NATO military helicopter and a ship, no rescue effort did not take place, The Guardian reported Sunday.
"NATO has taken cognizance of a press article which claims that an aircraft carrier of the North Atlantic Alliance has left 61 migrants die shipwrecked in the Mediterranean in 29 or 30 March, between Tripoli and Lampedusa," said a spokesman for the organization
"One carrier has been under NATO command at the time, Garibaldi Italian ship, and she was over 100 nautical miles offshore," said Carmen Romero.
"Therefore, any statement that NATO ships belonging to a wayward ship ignored false," the spokesman said.
A ship carrying 72 passengers, including 22 women and two young children faced problems in late March, after he left Tripoli on 25 March bound for Lampedusa, told The Guardian.
Only 11 passengers survived, the rest dying of hunger and thirst after their vessel was allowed to float adrift for 16 days.
Immigrants used the ship's satellite phone to contact the Italian coastguard. Shortly afterwards, a military helicopter came over the ship, and pilots threw water bottles and packages of cookies and sent them to keep their position until the arrival of a rescue boat. But this did not come and then the vessel went adrift, leaving out of fuel and passengers died of hunger and thirst, one by one.
02/12/2008
