Lampedusa: DVI team in action

The Disaster Victim Identification team of the Italian Police is taking all action to identify the victims of the October 3 shipwreck of the boat carrying African migrants off the island of Lampedusa.

As rescue workers continue to search the seas off the island, the police DVI experts are examining the corpses which have been recovered so far and gathering the victims' personal belongings. All information collected is entered into a database. The victims' items are kept in bags and the coffins with the bodies are sealed and lined up in an airport hangar, waiting to have a destination.

The DVI police staff are working round the clock taking photographs of the victims' faces, classifying personal items, extracting DNA, to make sure that each body is identified by name, and not by number.

The DVI team was established in 2005 by decree of the Chief of Police, with the task of identifying the victims of major air, land and sea disasters.

Besides the forensic activities carried out by the DVI experts, the police CID in Agrigento and the Central Operations Service are conducting targeted investigations in an effort to locate the people traffickers.

Italian