Up to 1,000 migrants are thought to have died after the fishing boat sank HO/AFP/GETTY IMAGESExperts studying hundreds of human skulls at an Italian laboratory are close to identifying the first of 1,000 victims of the Mediterranean’s deadliest migrant shipwreck. The remains were pulled from a fishing boat raised from the seabed after it sank between Libya and Italy in April 2015 — the biggest migrant death toll on a route where 14,782 have perished in the past five years. After months of extracting DNA from bones, including 352 skulls, a team in Milan is working with Italy’s missing persons commissioner to put out word in Africa and Europe to families desperate to know if a missing loved one was on board. A Red Cross team in Mauritania has taken 40 DNA swabs from relatives which will be sent to…

Source: The Times January 08, 2019 00:00 UTC