Ten dead, thousands saved in migrant rescue missions
Latest shipwreck brings the toll of dead and missing in Mediterranean to 4,220
ROME— Ten bodies were recovered and more than 2,200 people were saved in Saturday migrant rescue operations in the central Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard said.
There were 16 rescue missions involving Italy’s coast guard and navy, a Spanish navy vessel connected to a mission run by European Union border agency Frontex, several ships run by non-governmental organizations and private vessels, the coast guard said in a statement.
Earlier, a spokesperson said that the 10 dead were all found on the same rubber dinghy. He could not be specific about its location. This year has been the deadliest on record for Mediterranean migrant deaths.
Since January, 4,220 people have died or gone missing while crossing from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, according to International Organization for Migration records last updated Friday.
In a speech at the Vatican, Pope Francis said he felt “shame” for this “disgraceful situation.”
“What has the world come to, if when a bank goes bankrupt, scandalous sums of money immediately appear to save it, while when this human bankruptcy (the migration cri- sis) happens, not even a thousandth of those sums are ready to save our suffering brothers and sisters,” the Pope said.
“Thus the Mediterranean has become a cemetery, and not just the Mediterranean . . . There are many cemeteries near walls, walls stained with innocent blood.”
At least 239 migrants are believed to have drowned in the past week in two shipwrecks off Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said, adding to the toll in what was already the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea.
Survivor accounts suggest that two crowded boats broke up just off the coast Wednesday, said Carlotta Sami, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The 31 survivors were taken to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a rescue hub amid an ever-deadlier crisis as migrants depart Africa’s northern shores trying to reach Europe.
The reports from the survivors could not be independently confirmed, but it is common for migrant ships to be filled far beyond capacity, and hundreds have perished in past sinkings. If true, the latest shipwrecks bring the toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean to 4,220 this year, the highest on record, Sami said.
“This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said. With files from the Washington Post