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LAMPEDUSA, Italy: Italian authorities on Friday were trying to identify the bodies of 27 people who died when two crowded boats sank off the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.
One wooden coffin, marked with an “X,” could be seen at the local cemetery, where the bodies of some of the victims were being held, an AFP journalist said.
Broadcaster Rai reported that some of the coffins would be transported to Sicily for burial in several cemeteries there.
Lampedusa, just 90 miles (145 kilometers) off the coast of Tunisia, is often the first point of arrival for people trying to reach Europe in fragile or overcrowded boats.
Its reception center is currently home to 317 people, including about 70 mostly unaccompanied minors, said Giovanna Stabile of the Italian Red Cross, which runs the facility.
Most of them come from Egypt, Somalia and Bangladesh, she added.
Of the 60 survivors of Wednesday’s capsizing disaster, 58 were at the center. The two others were airlifted by helicopter to Sicily for treatment, she said.
“Last night, the procedures for identifying the bodies began,” said Stabile.
“This was a delicate moment, which was supported by the psychologist, the linguistic-cultural mediator and the multidisciplinary team,” she said.
“People reacted to the identification in a very composed manner.”
For some, however, it was too much.
One Somali teenager, in tears, identified a girl, his cousin, among the dead. “It can’t be! It can’t be!” he kept repeating, ANSA news agency reported.
The 27 victims, including three minors, died when two crowded boats heading from Libya capsized about 20 kilometers off Lampedusa.
The UN refugee agency said the boats were carrying at least 95 people. Italian news agency ANSA said 100 to 110 people may have been on board, meaning up to 23 could still be unaccounted for.
On Thursday, the Italian coast guard published a video of the rescue operation, showing young men desperately trying to cling to a floating rescue cylinder in the water.
The somber scene at the reception center was in stark contrast to elsewhere on the island, as throngs of tourists enjoyed Friday’s Ferragosto public holiday.
At the port, where dozens of migrants were still arriving by boat at the port, pleasure craft were bringing back tourists from sea trips to the sound of festive music.
At the cemetery, women came to pray and leave flowers for those who lost their lives, while a vigil in memory of the dead was held at a local Catholic shrine.
“Migrants continue to arrive... our arms are always open but when these deaths occur, it hurts us deeply,” one local woman, who gave her name only as Angela, told AFP.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Heavy monsoon rains have triggered landslides and flash floods across northern Pakistan, leaving at least 169 people dead in the last 24 hours, national and local officials said Friday.

The majority of the deaths, 150, were recorded in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

Nine more people were killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, while five died in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, it said.

The majority of those killed have died in flash floods and collapsing houses.

Five others, including two pilots, were killed when a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government helicopter crashed due to bad weather during a mission to deliver relief goods, the chief minister of the province, Ali Amin Gandapur, said in a statement.

The provincial government has declared the severely affected mountainous districts of Buner, Bajaur, Mansehra and Battagram as disaster-hit areas.

In Bajaur, a tribal district abutting Afghanistan, a crowd amassed around an excavator trawling a mud-soaked hill, AFP photos showed.

Funeral prayers began in a paddock nearby, with people grieving in front of several bodies covered by blankets.

The meteorological department has issued a heavy rain alert for the northwest, urging people to avoid “unnecessary exposure to vulnerable areas.”

In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, a region divided with Pakistan, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble on Friday after a flood crashed through a Himalayan village, killing at least 60 people and washing away dozens more.

The monsoon season brings South Asia about three-quarters of its annual rainfall, vital for agriculture and food security, but it also brings destruction.

Landslides and flash floods are common during the season, which usually begins in June and eases by the end of September.

Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, a representative of the national disaster agency, told AFP that this year’s monsoon season began earlier than usual and is expected to end later.

“The next 15 days, particularly from August 16 till the 30th of August, the intensity of the monsoon will further exacerbate,” he added.

The provincial government has declared Saturday as a day of mourning, chief minister Gandapur said.

“The national flag will fly at half-mast across the province, and the martyrs will be laid to rest with full state honors,” the statement from his office said.

Scientists say that climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and more frequent.

Pakistan is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and its population is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency.

The torrential rains that have pounded Pakistan since the start of the summer monsoon, described as “unusual” by authorities, have killed more than 320 people, nearly half of them children.

In July, Punjab, home to nearly half of Pakistan’s 255 million people, recorded 73 percent more rainfall than the previous year and more deaths than in the entire previous monsoon.

In 2022, monsoon floods submerged a third of the country and killed 1,700 people.