Italy sinking: Bad weather hampers search for migrants

Rough seas have forced divers to postpone their search for more than 200 migrants still unaccounted for after their boat sank off southern Italy.

Rescuers have so far found 111 bodies, and 155 people have been pulled alive from the seas 1km (half a mile) from the island of Lampedusa.


Dramatic video footage shows the boat lying upright on the seabed some 150ft (45m) below the surface.


Divers have described seeing horrific scenes inside the wreckage. Corpses are crammed into the wreck and some of the bodies - even in death - seeming to cling to the sides of the hull, the BBC's Alan Johnston reports.


So many bodies have been brought ashore that the island has had to send for more coffins and turn a hangar at the airport into a huge, makeshift mortuary. Italians are aghast at the scale of the tragedy, Italy's worst ever migrant shipwreck, our correspondent says.


A day of mourning has been declared, with flags flying at half-mast and a minute of silence observed in all Italian schools.

A special mass is being held on Friday evening in the church in Lampedusa. Pope Francis, visiting Assisi, described Friday as "a day of tears" for the


victims and condemned a "savage world" that ignores the plight of "people who have to flee poverty and hunger".


He has said he wants to use abandoned Catholic monasteries and convents to house refugees.


Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini - who wept at the scene of so many bodies - said: "After these deaths, we are expecting something to change. Things cannot stay the same."


"The future of Lampedusa is directly linked to policies on immigration and asylum," she told reporters.