Italian authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of death of 26 teenage girls whose bodies were recovered in on Sunday.
The girls, aged 14-18, are believed to have been migrants from Niger and Nigeria who had embarked on the treacherous route to Europe from Libya over the weekend.
Lorena Ciccotti, Salerno's head of police, told CNN that autopsies would be carried out on Tuesday and that coroners would be investigating the death of the girls.
Italian prosecutors are investigating the deaths of 26 Nigerian women – most of them teenagers – whose bodies were recovered at sea.
Their bodies were found close to a flimsy rubber dinghy that had all but sunk when rescuers arrived, Ciccotti said. Aid workers had described a grim scene: survivors hanging onto the remains of the vessel as the girls' bodies floated nearby.
There are suspicions that they may have been sexually abused and murdered as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean.
Five migrants are being questioned in the southern port of Salerno.
A Spanish warship, Cantabria, docked there carrying 375 migrants and the dead women, following several rescues.
Twenty-three of the dead women had been on a rubber boat with 64 other people.
Italian media report that the women’s bodies are being kept in a refrigerated section of the warship. Most of them were aged 14-18.
Most of the 375 survivors brought to Salerno were sub-Saharan Africans, from Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, The Gambia and Sudan, the daily La Repubblica reports.
Among them were 90 women – eight of them pregnant – and 52 children.
On Monday, Italian police arrested two men, an Egyptian and a Libyan accused with human smuggling. The men are not believed to be connected to the boat that was transporting the teenage girls.
Since the start of this year, 2,839 migrants have died on the central Mediterranean route, according to the International Organization for Migration. 150,982 migrants have reached European shores, of which around 74% are Italian arrivals.
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