700 DEAD IN THREE DAYS
Desperate migrants die as three ships sink
• More than 700 migrants are feared dead in Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks over three days, even as rescue ships saved thousands of others in daring operations.
It is the largest loss of life reported in the Mediterranean since April 2015, when a single ship sank with an estimated 800 people trapped inside. Humanitarian organizations say that many migrant boats sink without a trace, with the dead never found, and their fates only recounted by family members who report their failure to arrive in Europe.
“It really looks like that in the last period the situation is really worsening in the last week, if the news is confirmed,” said Giovanna Di Benedetto, a Save the Children spokeswoman in Italy.
The largest number of missing and presumed dead was aboard a wooden fishing boat being towed by another smugglers’ boat from the Libyan port of Sabratha that sank Thursday.
Estimates by police and humanitarian organizations, based on survivor accounts, range from around 400 to about 550 missing in that sinking alone.
One survivor from Eritrea, 21-year-old Filmon Selomon, said water started seeping into the second boat after three hours of navigation, and that the migrants tried vainly to get the water out of the sinking boat.
“It was very hard because the water was coming from everywhere. We tried for six hours, after which we said it was not possible anymore.”
He jumped into the water and swam to the other boat before the tow line on the navigable boat was cut to prevent it from sinking when the other went down.
Police said the line, which was ordered cut by the commander when it was at full t ension, whipped back, fatally slashing the neck of a female migrant.
Italian police say 300 people in the hold went down with the second boat when it sank, while around 200 on the upper deck jumped into the sea. Just 90 of those were saved, along with about 500 in the first boat.
Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman in Italy for UNHCR, put the number of migrants and refugees missing in that incident at 550 based on a higher tally of 670 people on board.
Most of the people on board were Eritrean, according to Save the Children, including many women and children. One of the survivors included a four- year- old girl whose mother had been killed in a traffic accident in Libya just days before embarking, Di Benedetto said.
The UNHCR’s Sami also said that an estimated 100 people are missing from a smugglers’ boat that capsized Wednesday off the coast of Libya, captured in dramatic footage by Italian rescuers.
In a third shipwreck on Friday, Sami said 135 people were rescued, 45 bodies were recovered and an unknown numbers of migrants were still missing.