Smugglers threw asylum seekers into Mediterranean

One of the few survivors of the ship that was deliberately sunk off Malta by smugglers, drowning up to 500 people, recounts her story.
Palestinians throw roses in the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Gaza City on September 18, 2014 in mourning over the loss of fellow Palestinians who had boarded a boat to Europe that sank off Malta last week. In one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks on record, the boat, with 500 people on board, was intentionally capsized by traffickers as it made its way from Egypt to Italy. Only 10 people are known to have survived, among them four Palestinians from the 100 Gazans believed to have been on board. AFP
Palestinians throw roses in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza City in mourning over the loss of fellow Palestinians who had boarded a boat to Europe that sank off Malta last week, Sept. 18, 2014. - AFP/Getty Images/Mohammed Abed
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Tom Rollins
@@TomWRollins

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — The journey started like any other.

The migrants paid the smugglers. Buses collected them in groups of around 100 and took them to Damietta, a port on the northeastern edge of the Nile Delta. On Sept. 6, the several hundred migrants from Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Sudan and Syria left Damietta, bound for Italy.

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