What can be done about drowning migrants?

THE mass immigration from North Africa won’t be solved easily. The countries bordering the Mediterranean are in turmoil, as they are the final escape route to Europe for desperate people and an obvious target for people traffickers. It is grossly unfair that Italy is having to take the responsibility for rescuing and homing these unfortunates. It’s going to be a massive task to sort out, and it can’t be swept under the carpet despite the European Union’s other economic problems.

PETER FRISTON, Northwich, Cheshire. THE recent spate of peoplesmuggling across the Mediterranean is nothing new. After the Vietnam War, there was a thriving racket of people paying to be left floating in the approaches to the Malacca Straits, hoping to be picked up by a passing merchant ship. It worked for a while until the merchant ships began passing by and ignoring the so-called refugees, and the whole racket simply died out. The answer is to tow the smuggling ships back to Africa. As soon as word gets back, then this people racket will also collapse.

JAMES WELLS, Billericay, Essex. I HAVE nothing but sympathy for those migrants who died at sea, but to blame the British or EU governments, especially Italy, is ridiculous. All EU states have their own domestic problems with chronic immigration, unemployment and Islamic terrorism. The EU should be helping the countries concerned to prosecute the leaders of the humantrafficking cartels. It should also assemble a naval task force to round up these vessels and tow them back to their countries of origin and let them deal with them. Sadly, I foresee this situation probably getting worse until the civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya and the social and ethnic crises in the likes of northern Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Kenya end.