Italy recovers 5 more bodies from sunken migrant boat

ROME – Italy’s coast guard says its divers have retrieved more bodies from the capsizing of a migrants’ boat, which sank near a tiny Italian island.

The coast guard in a statement said the recovery of five bodies on Sunday brings the confirmed death toll in the Nov. 23 capsizing to at least 18. The coast guard rescued 149 migrants after their crowded boat overturned neat Lampedusa. Survivors have said some 20 migrants were missing.

The boat had been launched by Libya-based human traffickers.

In the last several years, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing poverty or violence in their homelands have risked their lives aboard migrant smugglers’ unseaworthy boats to reach European shores after setting out from Libya.