BARI - A thump in the middle of the night. A thud disturbing that he threw all out of bed. Then the sirens. The ride on the pier. The screams of children and terror. The fear of not being saved. Fear is all in the eyes of the 196 passengers disembarked the ship, "Ankara", yesterday evening at 21 o'clock, the Albanian port of Bari hundred fifty and forty Italians who survived the tragic accident on Thursday night, when the ferry to Bari line, "Deniz Line" collided with a merchant ship flying the Turkish flag, "Reina-1", directed in Montenegro, twenty miles off the Albanian coast. Eight are still missing in international waters. Perhaps victims. Two survivors and one dead. "At twenty I heard a loud noise and when I came out I saw the freighter slipped beneath the ferry - said Nico, an Albanian boy of 30 years - I saw everything from the beginning. That was under our boat. And 'sunk in ten seconds. "
Under the eyes of the passengers have seated immediate relief.
"When I saw the other boat people who put the life jacket, I feared the worst." Many other children on board. Their mothers just landed look up to heaven. It also does Liliana, 25 years. Your baby has just two years. On the face there are still signs of tears. "I've never had so much fear - tells the young woman - at the time of the collision was on the pier. Because I could not sleep. My son was with his father. I just remember seeing the freighter come against us. " And it was too late to avoid collision. "I saw a wave which seemed high overwhelm any moment," says the distraught young mother. Someone on the ship, he woke with a start. Someone else, even you have not noticed anything. He slept. At that time - two in the morning - so many had just fallen asleep. All'allerta crew, panic broke out. A general stampede among the aisles of booths.
Kuki Paris, 20 years, has hardly the strength to tell the tale. Shakes hands with his girlfriend, Sofia. "I was sure we would have sunk us too - Kuki tells shocked - after the loud noise I looked out from the docks and I heard a scream. Our crew has rescued two people from the Turkish ship. " Ilir, 45, manager of the service port of Durres, has been awake for more than 24 hours. "After what has happened is no longer able to sleep - he explains - every time I tried to close my eyes resented the noise. It seemed to me to relive the same nightmare. " The landing at Bari, yesterday, took place quietly. The passengers were welcomed by the staff of the Harbour, were accompanied on foot outside the terminal for Albania. The means, such as cars and trucks, are left inside. Since yesterday evening, the boat is subjected to a series of tests to check for any damage caused by the accident. Are not good, however, the news came across the coast. The Albanian authorities have decided to discontinue operations research taken immediately after the accident. There is no hope of being able to recover the missing.
The freighter was carrying a crew of ten people, all of Turkish nationality. On the site of the collision were only found some remains of the wooden ship, and some life jackets scattered here and there, nothing else. Ahmet Bau, one of the Turkish survivors, told Albanian TV station that "it all happened quickly, within a few moments. Of us, only three or four were on deck, the others were inside the ship. " According to some testimonies of the ferry crew, the cargo would have been alerted and was on a wrong route and there would be a request by radio to change direction. But the shift would not happen in time. The search for the missing operations continued for about ten hours, with a commitment to a helicopter and seven boats of the Coast Guard and the Albanian border police, and even a patrol boat of Italian financial police.