A murder probe has launched after claims a teenage girl was choked to death and raped on a sinking migrant boat that killed dozens in Italy.
The boat was on its way from Turkey to Europe when it sank in the central Mediterranean on June 17.
Now the devastating tragedy has taken another dark turn after reports that a 27-year-old man from Iraq has been arrested on suspicion of murder.
The man allegedly ‘vented’ his rage on the 16-year-old girl, a daughter of another shipwreck survivor, Italian outlet AGI reports.
Based on accounts from those on board pieced together by the Calabria state police, he attacked, suffocated and raped the Iraqi girl.
Her terrified mother managed to survive the shipwreck.
She reported the incident as soon as she was taken on land in Roccella Jonica in southern Italy, the outlet reports.
The 12 survivors were brought to the port, but another woman later died.
Search and rescue teams later recovered further 35 bodies, bringing the official death toll to 36, MailOnline reports.
The bodies found at sea included 15 children.
Scores are still missing and feared dead.
The coast guard allegedly took four days to arrive as passenger hang on to the vessel’s remains, according to Sky News.
The perilous journey has been organised from a spot near Bodrum, Turkey.
More than 70 people are thought to have paid for a place in the boat, with majority of passengers being Kurds from Iran and Iraq, the broadcaster reports.
Mitra Ghasem Karimi, from Iran who now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, had travelled to Roccella Ionica in desperate search for her brother and sister who had been on the vessel and were lost at sea.
She told Sky News: ‘There was no water, there was no food in the boat – but to the families and the people who got in that damn boat, [the smugglers] said yes, there is water, food.
‘My brother and sister had life jackets, but they would not let them take them with them. Why?’
Mitra and her husband paid €6,000 to hire a helicopter to look for any signs in the vast sea.
The sea route across Mediterranean is one of the deadliest for migrants, with thousands of lives lost each year.
Since 2014, almost 30,000 migrants have been recorded missing in the Mediterranean, according to the Missing Migrants Project.
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