ROME- As many as 51 migrants were found dead in the hold of a boat heading towards Italy on Wednesday, which was saved in the Strait of Sicily by a Swedish team, maritime sources said. More than 400 other migrants were on board.

 The Swedish boat Poseidon, which had just taken on board 130 migrants who were found on a dinghy, redirected its course to save the boat after being alerted by the National Rescue Centre of the Italian Coast Guard. The rescue saved 439 migrants, and crew from the Swedish boat were said to have opened the hatch and found the bodies of the migrants killed by asphyxiation from a presumed build-up of fumes.

The Poseidon is set to arrive in Palermo on Thursday evening, with 571 migrants and the bodies of 52 people on board. The bodies of three women, one of whom was pregnant were found on a rubber dinghy Wednesday. On Wednesday alone 3,000 migrants were saved by rescue forces in the Strait of Sicily.

 The case is a common one on the Mediterranean Sea, the most infamous being the “Ferragosto Massacre” when 49 migrants were found dead in the hold after they were trapped, unable to get onto the external deck. The human traffickers manning the ship were said to have kept them underneath “resorting to violence with kicks, punches and whipping with belts” even if “they were only trying to leave through the hatch.”

 To help the investigation, 12 of the 312 survivors re-enacted the scene which led to the deaths of the 49 suffocated migrants. The survivors and the bodies arrived in the port at Etna on board the Norwegian Siem Pilot boat on August 17, and Catanian prosecutors heard the testimonies of those on the boat. Prosecutors were able to identify the eight human traffickers on board, including Libyan Ayooub Harboob, 20, believed to be the commander. The others were aged from 16 to 23, of Syrian, Moroccan and Libyan nationality. The eight accused were arrested following the investigation’s conclusion. Official reports say that the hold was approximately six metres by four, and with a height of 1.20 metres. The men put in the hold were chosen solely by nationality, comprising of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis, whilst those from Sub-Saharan regions were on the stern. Those on deck were Syrian, Libyan and migrants from the Maghreb, which included children and women.

 In a similar incident near Pozzallo, southern Sicily, migrants in the hold forced open the hatch in order to breathe, “they closed us in the hold and when we realised that we could suffocate down there we broke down the hatch” said one of the migrants, who were rescued in the Strait of Sicily. Investigators arrested the alleged human traffickers who were from Tunisia and Morocco, aged 35 and 18 respectively. Migrants recognised the two men, and told investigators that more than 200 people were kept in the hold of the wooden boat. The traffickers were said to have earned about 700,000 dollars from the migrants desperate to climb aboard the ship.