I couldn't save them: fisherman on Italy shipwreck

Vincenzo Luciano is telling us he raced to the beach from his house, which is nearby, jumped into the water with his clothes on, and pulled out a little boy. He's a fisherman here at Staccato di Coutro, Italy, the scene of that massive shipwreck on Sunday that killed at least 67 migrants trying to cross into Europe, including children and most of them from Afghanistan. He was one of the first to find the aftermath. Before dawn, he started pulling out bodies by the light of his friend's cell phone. He was two or three years old. I pulled him out with his eyes still open, and I said, maybe I'll save him. When I got out of the water, I saw that phone was coming out of his mouth, so I had to close those eyes.

When I close my eyes, I still see that child. I always think that if I had been there one minute or 20 seconds earlier, perhaps I could have saved him. I feel guilty. A friend of mine was holding the light for me while I was picking up the dead. We couldn't understand anything. There were people screaming. Others wanted to know if they were their children.

They were pulling us, shouting, and I wasn't ready for this. I panicked, but as the hours passed, we saw more and more dead people. It's still not clear what the total death toll of the disaster is now days later. Authorities say there were about 80 survivors, but the Turkish sailboat they were using is thought to have had between 150 and 200 people aboard. Meanwhile, questions persist over the circumstances of the disaster, how authorities reacted to it, and it's brought renewed attention to illegal immigration in Italy and Europe as a whole. Luciano says he's not an expert and isn't sure if rescuers could have saved the victims given the rough seas, but that something could have been done. They weren't even 100 meters from the shore.

reuters, news, top news, headlines, breaking news, news today, thomson reuters, reuters youtube, markets today, bloomberg, World, death/injury