700 feared dead off Libyan coast: UN

Pozzallo (Italy), May 29

Over 700 migrants are feared dead in three Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks south of Italy in the last few days as they tried desperately to reach Europe in unseaworthy smuggling boats, the UN refugee agency said today.

About 14,000 have been rescued since Monday amid calm seas, and there have been at least three confirmed instances of boats sinking.

Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for UNHCR, said an estimated 100 persons were missing from a smugglers’ boat that capsized on Wednesday. The Italian navy took horrific pictures of that capsizing even as it rushed to rescue all those thrown into the sea from the boat.

She said about 550 other migrants and refugees are missing from a smuggling boat that capsized on Thursday morning after leaving the western Libyan port of Sabratha a day earlier.

She says refugees who saw the boat sink told her agency that that boat, which was carrying about 670 people, didn’t have an engine and was being towed by another packed smuggling boat before it capsized. About 25 people from the capsized boat managed to reach the first boat and survive, 79 others were rescued by international patrol boats and 15 bodies were recovered.

The Italian Police have corroborated the account of the Thursday sinking in their interviews with survivors, but came up with different numbers. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the figures. According to survivors, the second boat was carrying about 500 migrants when it starting taking on water after about eight hours of navigation. Efforts to empty the water — with a line of migrants passing a few 5-liter bailing cans — were insufficient and the boat was completely under water after an hour and a half, the police said. At that point, the commander of the first smuggler’s boat ordered the tow rope to be cut to the sinking boat. The migrants on the top deck jumped into the sea, while those below deck, estimated at 300, sank with the ship, police said. Of those who jumped into the sea, just 90 were rescued. Survivors identified the commander of the boat with the working engine as a 28-year-old Sudanese man, who has been arrested, the police said.

In a third shipwreck on Friday, Sami says 135 people were rescued, 45 bodies were recovered and an unknown number of people — many more, the migrants say — are missing.

Survivors are being taken to the Italian ports of Taranto and Pozzallo. “Some were more shaken than others because they had lost their loved ones,” said Raffaele Martino, commander of the Italian Navy ship Vega.

Sami says the UN agency is trying to gather information with sensitivity considering that most of the new arrivals are either shipwreck survivors themselves or traumatised by what they saw. 

Despite the surge this week, as of Friday 40,660 arrivals had been counted, 2 percent fewer than the same period of last year, the Interior Ministry said. 

This week's arrivals included Eritreans, Sudanese, Nigerians and many other West Africans, humanitarian groups say. Most of the boats this week appear to have left from  Sabratha, Libya, where many said smugglers had beaten them and women said they had been raped, said MSF, which has three rescue boats in the area.

The migrants are piled onto flimsy rubber boats or old fishing vessels which can toss their occupants into the sea in a matter of seconds. — Agencies

19 refugees rescued from English Channel

London: The British coastguard said it rescued 19 migrants from English Channel after their inflatable boat began to take on water on Sunday. “The rhib (rigid-hulled inflatable boat), with 19 persons on board was located at 2 am (0100 GMT) and the incident handed over to Border Force,” it said. AFP

Dangerous border passage

The migrants — fleeing wars, oppression and poverty — often do not know how to swim and do not have life jackets. They pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to make the crossing from Libya to Italy, by far the most dangerous border passage for migrants in the world.