26 teenage women were found dead at sea. Italian officials wonder if they were killed.
By Marwa Eltagouri and Herman Wong
The gruesome discovery Sunday of the bodies of more than two dozen migrant women in the Mediterranean Sea has left Italian officials wondering whether the women were purposely killed, and why all who died were female.
Lorena Ciccotti, police chief in the southern Italian port city of Salerno, told CNN that officials have launched an investigation into the women's cause of the death to see if they had been tortured or sexually assaulted. Officials believe the 26 women, who are all Nigerian and range from 14 to 18 years old, died attempting the dangerous journey from Libya to Europe over the weekend.
Libya is the biggest launchpad for African migrants hoping to build new lives in Europe. Since the collapse of Moammar Gaddafi's regime, the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya has soared. Sub-Saharan Africans wishing to flee poverty or war have taken advantage of Libya's power vacuum, which has allowed smugglers to operate, for the most part, without restraint. Migrants' desire to reach Italy — a country in close proximity to Libya — has made the North African country a center for human smuggling.
Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/11/07/26-teenage-women-were-found-dead-at-sea-italian-officials-wonder-if-they-were-killed/?utm_term=.9f72864112e7
Just like on the Mexican border, I think if one welcomes the "poor" refugees so much that it makes others want to come, there is a lot of death and destruction in getting here in the first place. It's almost like the open-immigration types enable these bad things to happen and organized crime and etc.
