No more ‘death voyages,’ EU vows
Italian PM urges united response to humanitarian crisis
MILAN — Rescuers responded to three new migrant emergencies in the Mediterranean Sea on Monday following a weekend disaster that is believed to have left hundreds dead, as top European officials searched for ways to stem the tide of illegal trafficking from Africa and the Middle East.
Decrying what he called an “escalation in death voyages,” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi urged a united European response to combat the rising humanitarian crisis. “We are facing an organized criminal activity that is making lots of money, but above all ruining many lives,” Renzi said in a joint news conference with Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
Calling the weekend tragedy “a game changer,” Muscat said that “if Europe doesn’t work together, history will judge it very badly.”
Even as European leaders grappled with how to respond to the crisis, more unseaworthy boats were setting off Monday on the perilous journey. Renzi said Italian ships were rushing to respond to distress calls from an inflatable life raft near the Libyan coast with 100 to 150 migrants on board and to another boat carrying about 300 people.
In a separate incident, at least three people, including a child, were killed and 93 others were rescued when a wooden boat carrying dozens of migrants who had departed from Turkey ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes. Dramatic video showed migrants clinging to pieces of wreckage and rescuers helping them ashore.
Meanwhile, new details emerged about the weekend disaster that left at least 700 feared drowned — a death toll that, if confirmed, could make it the deadliest migrant tragedy. Italian prosecutors said hundreds were locked below deck unable to escape when the rickety boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
Speaking at a news conference in Catania, Sicily, prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said “a few hundred were forced into the hold and they were locked in and prevented from coming out.” He said hundreds more were locked on a second level of the boat, which also had hundreds of migrants squeezed into its upper deck.
One survivor of the weekend sinking, identified as a 32-year-old Bangladeshi, has put the number of people on board the smugglers’ boat at as many as 950, though Salvi said that number should be treated with caution since the survivor had no means to verify numbers. He said the coast guard had estimated 700 people were on board, based on its observations at the scene.
Renzi said that recent tragedies have proven that providing rescue wasn’t always possible, given the conditions of the smugglers’ boats and delicacy of such operations, and that the focus needs to be on preventing the boats from leaving Libya. “Continuing to think that allowing them to depart and then chasing after them means putting at risk human lives,” he said.