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MARINA MILITARE. — The UN refugee agency said yesterday it feared around 500 migrants from Africa had drowned in the Mediterranean, in what could be one of the worst tragedies since the start of the migrant crisis in Europe.
Survivors who were spotted drifting at sea before being picked up by a passing merchant ship on April 16 told the UNHCR many migrants drowned when human traffickers tried to transfer people to an already overcrowded vessel somewhere between Libya and Italy. The latest reported deaths come as Europe struggles to find a way of stemming the flow of people fleeing war, poverty and persecution in what has become Europe’s worst migrant crisis since World War II.
“The survivors told us that they had been part of a group of between 100 and 200 people who departed last week from a locality near Tobruk in Libya on a 30-metre boat,” the UNHCR said in a statement.
“After sailing for several hours, the smugglers in charge of the boat attempted to transfer the passengers to a larger ship carrying hundreds of people in terribly overcrowded conditions,” it said, adding that the larger boat then capsized and sank.
The 41 survivors – 37 men, three women and a three-year-old child – included migrants who were still on the smaller ship when the one they were being transferred to capsized as well as others who had already boarded the larger ship and managed to swim back when it sank.
They are believed to have drifted at sea for up to three days before being rescued by the Philippine-flagged cargo vessel and taken to Kalamata on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Of those rescued, 23 were Somali, 11 Ethiopian, six Egyptian and one from Sudan, the statement said, adding that they were being temporarily housed in a stadium in Kalamata.
In what is believed to be the deadliest incident involving migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe, at least 740 people were feared to have perished in April 2015 after a crammed fishing boat capsized in Libyan waters.
In another incident in September 2014, up to 500 migrants drowned off Malta after people smugglers rammed their boat in an attempt to force them onto a smaller vessel.
The huge refugee influx arriving on European Union shores has sparked fierce disagreements among the bloc’s 28 members and brought its system of open borders to the brink of collapse. — AFP.
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