News | Sunday, 30 August 2009

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Decomposed body found off B’buga

The decomposed body of a man was found at just off Birzebbuga this morning. The corpse was recovered by the Armed Forces and taken to Haywharf. The man was wearing a yellow t-shirt and underwear.
The AFM was informed by a local fisherman that he had sighted a corpse floating in the sea off the Ghar Hassan area.
Earlier yesterday morning at 6:34am, the AFM’s Maritime Squadron dispatched its Vittoria-class rescue-launch to the area so as to locate and recover the corpse. 
The corpse, which had a yellow vest, was recovered around a half a nautical mile off il-Mara Point further south of the shoreline. 
The corpse was later landed at the Maritime Squadron’s base at Haywharf in Floriana, where a Police hearse and Valletta Water-Police officers were waiting.
Duty Magistrate Edwina Grima has appointed a number of experts to assist her instituted inquiry, whilst Police authorities are conducting further investigations.
The corpse recovered is of a black male, wearing only the yellow T-shirt and underwear, but no life-jacket. The state of the corpse, not very severely decomposed yet, is indicative that he may well have been part of the group that beached themselves last Wednesday night near the Freeport’s oil bunkering facility, and who were from a dinghy-load of some 80 migrants that were intercepted later by the AFM Maritime Squadron. That night, another male immigrant who drowned, had been recovered from those waters in a heavy sea swell.
The Armed Forces and Frontex air and naval assets were until late yesterday night monitoring a dinghy laden with Somali migrants who were insisting to be allowed to travel on towards Italy.
Meanwhile, the AFM were on the lookout for another boat with a reported 150 Somali migrants on board and which supposedly left a Libyan port on Thursday night, heading north towards either Malta or Lampedusa.

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