A small rubber boat making the perilous voyage between Libya and Italy turned into a death trap for 12 Christians who were tossed overboard and drowned during the journey by Muslim passengers,

Italian authorities arrested 15 Muslims and charged them with murder aggravated by religious hatred.

Associated Press:

The survivors said they had boarded a rubber boat April 14 on the Libyan coast with 105 passengers aboard, part of the wave of migrants taking advantage of calm seas and warm weather to make the risky crossing from Libya, where most smuggling operations originate.

During the crossing, the migrants from Nigeria and Ghana — believed to be Christians — were threatened with being abandoned at sea by some 15 other passengers from the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali and Guinea Bissau.

Eventually the threat was carried out and 12 were pushed overboard. The statement said the motive was that the victims "professed the Christian faith while the aggressors were Muslim."

The surviving Christians, the statement said, only managed to stay on board by forming a "human chain" to resist the assault.

The flow of refugees from Libya has turned into a tsunami. Italian authorities say that 10,000 migrants have been picked up at sea this week alone with the flood of people coming from many other countries besides Libya. 

The Italian people, quite naturally, are alarmed and are beginning to resist:

The huge influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa is putting an intolerable strain on a country that has been in recession for the past five years.

Conservative politicians called this week for boatloads of refugees to be sent back to Libya, while the system of migrant reception centres is on the verge of collapse.

The government in Rome has asked regional authorities to provide 6,500 new beds for migrants who are arriving on a daily basis in Sicily and the tiny island of Lampedusa.

But many regions responded grudgingly - some with downright hostility - saying they had no space to offer.

Val d’Aosta, a small, mountainous region on the French border, offered to take just one refugee.

There was also a frosty reception from the wealthy northern region of Lombardy.

“Here, as in Veneto (a neighbouring region that includes Venice) there is zero space,” said Roberto Maroni, the governor of Lombardy and a member of the staunchly anti-immigration Northern League. "We cannot be subjected to this invasion.”

“We are totally opposed to taking any more migrants,” said Luca Zaia, the governor of Veneto and also a member of the Northern League.

Conservative politicians say the policy of rescuing migrants at sea only encourages people trafficking by Libyan gangs.

As the world order begins to unravel, people living in war torn, poverty stricken, gang infested countries are looking to escape. If this keeps up for a couple of years, the pace of demographic change in the west - already changing due to the influx of Muslims - will accelerate. The world is blowing up and with no leadership from the US, and no effective international body to fill the power vacuum, all the normal controls on the movement of people has disappeared, leading to the chaos we see in Italy and elsewhere.