Stadium filled with coffins of shipwrecked migrants

Survivors and other family members of dozens of migrants who died in a shipwreck off Italy’s southern coast have been paying respects at a sports complex as public viewing of rows of closed coffins began.

Meanwhile, the search by air and sea to spot any of the many believed still to be missing continued for a fourth day.

Italian state TV and the LaPresse news agency said a child’s body was the latest of three corpses to be recovered, raising the confirmed death toll to 67.

Eighty people survived the shipwreck. According to survivor accounts, the boat had held 170 or more passengers when it set out from the Turkish port of Izmir a few days earlier.

The coffins — brown ones for adults and white ones for children — were arranged in neat rows on the sports facility’s wooden floor in the city of Crotone. On top of each coffin was a bouquet of flowers. Some people added toys on the coffins of children.

According to family accounts, some passengers had called loved ones in Europe and excitedly reported that they could see the Italian mainland — about an hour before the boat smashed up against a reef or sandbank in the Ionian Sea.

When the relatives heard about the shipwreck, many drove from Germany, northern Italy and other European points to Cutro, the beach town where many of the bodies washed up and some of the survivors came ashore.

Viewing the coffins along with victims’ families were the mayors of nearby Italian towns, the local bishop and imam, and townspeople.