by Anike Jacobs

12 African migrants died yesterday after being thrown overboard by fellow passengers into the Mediterranean sea.

Police in the Sicilian port of Palermo  confirmed the news to the AFP, saying they had arrested some 15 Muslim migrants suspected of attacking the Christian passengers after a religious row on a boat headed for Italy.

The 12 victims were Nigerians and Ghanaians while the 15 suspects came from Senegal, Mali and Ivory Coast.

They were charged with “multiple aggravated murder motivated by religious hate,” according to a police statement.

According to report, the motive for the attack was because the victims ‘professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim’.

The illegal immigrants, 105 of them in number, left Libya on Tuesday in a rubber boat.

When they sailed north across the Mediterranean Sea, a fight broke out and the Muslim occupants in the boat, mainly from Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal engaged in a fight with their fellow immigrants who were Christians and threw 12 of them overboard, Italian police said.

Other Christians who survived the attack on the boat told police that they were spared “because they strongly opposed the drowning attempt and formed a human chain”.

The Italian police have arrested 15 of the Muslims that carried out the attack and they will be charged with multiple homicide.