Migrants were ‘like sardines in a tin’

If wind or rain had whipped up before the LÉ Niamh reached a wooden barge crammed with more than 500 migrants, the death toll onboard would probably have been far higher.

The 13 men and one youth who died on the vessel, which was not seaworthy, were probably crushed and suffocated because people-smugglers had crammed them in “like sardines in a tin”.

Space was so tight on the craft that one senior Navy officer said, had the weather deteriorated and migrants tried to seek cover, more deaths would probably have occurred from crushing.