Latest migrant disaster may force action
Up to 950 people on vessel that capsized off Libyan coast; few survivors have been found
ROME— A smuggler’s boat crammed with hundreds of people overturned off Libya’s coast as rescuers approached on Sunday, causing what could be the Mediterranean’s deadliest known migrant tragedy and intensifying pressure on the European Union to finally meet demands for decisive action.
Italian prosecutors said a Bangladeshi survivor flown to Sicily for treatment told them 950 people were aboard, including hundreds who had been locked in the hold by smugglers. Earlier, authorities said a survivor told them 700 migrants were on board.
It wasn’t immediately clear if they were referring to the same survivor, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said authorities were “not in a position to confirm or verify” the death toll.
Eighteen ships joined the rescue effort, but only 28 survivors and 24 bodies were pulled from the water by nightfall, Renzi said. These small numbers make more sense if hundreds of people were locked in the hold, because with so much weight down below, “surely the boat would have sunk,” said Gen. Antonino Iraso of Italy’s border police, which has deployed boats in the operation.
Prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said a survivor from Bangladesh described the situation on the fishing boat to prosecutors who interviewed him in a hospital. The man said about 300 people were in the hold when the fishing boat overturned and about 200 women and dozens of children also were on board.
Salvi stressed there was no confirmation yet of the man’s account and the investigation is ongoing.
Iraso said the sea in the area is too deep for divers, suggesting the final toll may never be known. The Mediterranean Sea off Libya’s coast runs as deep as five kilometres or more.
“How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” asked Renzi, who strategized with his top ministers ahead of Monday’s European Union meeting in Luxembourg, where foreign ministers scrambled to add stopping the smugglers to their agenda.
Resurgent right-wing political parties have made a rallying cry out of a rising tide of illegal migration. So far this year, 35,000 asylum seekers and migrants have reached Europe and more than 900 are known to have died trying.
With Sunday’s tragedy, demands for decisive action were going mainstream, as authorities from France, Spain, Germany and Britain joined calls for a unified response.
“Europe can do more and Europe must do more,” said Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament. “It is a shame and a confession of failure how many countries run away from responsibility and how little money we provide for rescue missions.”
Rescuers were “checking who is alive and who is dead” in an area littered with debris and oil from the capsized ship Sunday. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose island nation joined the effort, said only 50 survived and called it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.”
The 20-metre-long vessel may have overturned because migrants rushed to one side of the craft late Saturday night when they saw an approaching container ship, which was sent to the area by Italy’s Coast Guard.