Eight suspected human traffickers thought to have forced migrants to stay in the hold of a fishing boat in the Mediterranean as 49 of them suffocated on engine fumes have been arrested on suspicion of homicide, Italian police said yesterday. Some of the traffickers were believed to have kicked the heads of the migrants when they tried to climb out of the hold as the air became unbreathable, a prosecutor told a news conference in Sicily. The dead migrants were discovered last weekend packed into a fishing boat.