Italy controls drifting migrant ship

According to Italy's navy, six coast guard officers were lowered from a helicopter onto the 73-meter-long (240-foot-long) Ezadeen ship on Friday as it floated some 40 kilometers (25 miles) off Crotone on Italy's heel.

The Icelandic ship Tyr, which has been working as part of a new European patrol force to detect and aid migrants at sea, then began towing the ship to shore.

By midday local time (1300 GMT) it remained unclear at which port the ship would dock as bad weather had made the route uncertain.

Abandoned ship

Before running out of fuel, the nigh-on 50-year-old ship had been moving at a brisk speed of seven knots and was spotted by a coast guard plane shortly after nightfall 80 miles offshore.

Italian navy spokesman Captain Filippo Marini, said that a migrant had called for help earlier in the day. "We're without crew, we're heading toward the Italian coast and we have no one to steer," the woman said.

Abandoning a ship after setting it on a crash course appears to be a new technique adopted by migrant smugglers, Marini told Italian state radio, "but the important thing is there are lives to be saved."

The Sierra Leone-flagged ship was meant to be travelling between Famagusta in northern Turkish-controlled Cyprus and the southern French port of Sete.

The latest episode of a migrant ship comes two days after Italian sailors intercepted a Moldovan-flagged freighter (pictured above) carrying more than 700 migrants, mostly from Syria. The ship came within five miles of disaster before navy officers boarded and brought things under control.

Record year

On Friday, the ravaged Norman Atlantic ferry also arrived in Brindisi, Italy, five days after a fire on board led to the deaths of 13 people.

According to investigators working to determine the cause of the blaze, it was also likely that the ship was carrying illegal migrants who were hidden in the hold.

"We fear that we'll find more dead people once we recover the wreck," said Giuseppe Volpe, the Italian prosecutor leading the investigation.

2014 was a record year for people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, with more than 170,000 migrants being intercepted or rescued by Italian forces alone.

ksb/es (AFP, Reuters)