Blue Sky M and Italian Authorities

Italian authorities: A woman and a child rescued from the Moldovan-flagged Blue Sky M carrying hundreds of migrants arrive at the southern Italian port of Gallipoli, 170 kilometres south of Bari, Italy, Wednesday. Italian authorities took control Tuesday of a cargo ship carrying hundreds of migrants after the crew disappeared and set it on a programmed route to crash into a coast, officials said. The alarm was first raised about the Blue Sky M after a passenger sent a distress call earlier Tuesday when the ship was off Greece. The operation came two days after a Greek-operated ferry caught fire between Greece and Italy with the loss of at least 11 lives, prompting a two-day search and rescue effort. Photo by The Associated Press, according to The Telegram. In the latest such incident, the cargo ship Ezadeen was stopped with about 450 migrants aboard after smugglers sent it speeding toward the coast in rough seas with no one in command. Italian authorities lowered engineers and electricians onto the wave-tossed ship by helicopter to secure it, and the Icelandic Coast Guard began towing it toward port in Italy. It was expected to arrive Friday night and Smugglers who bring migrants to Europe by sea appear to have adopted a new and more dangerous tactic: cramming hundreds of them onto a large cargo ship, setting it on an automated course to crash into the coast, and then abandoning the helm. It happened twice this week in the span of three days, and both episodes could have ended in tragedy if the vessels had not been intercepted at sea. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.