As 6,000 Med migrants are picked up, tragedy strikes one packed boat
OVERLOADED with migrants, many of them women and children, the old wooden fishing boat began to rock violently on the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
Then, just as an Italian navy patrol boat moved in to offer help yesterday, the boat turned turtle, throwing its human cargo into the sea.
Some of the migrants jumped clear and others tried to climb back aboard the upsidedown hull. But many could not swim and at least five drowned.
The Italians threw ropes and lifejackets and managed to pluck 562 out of the sea after the tragedy off the Libyan coast.
It means more than 6,000 people attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Italy have been rescued since Monday, plunging Europe into a renewed migrant crisis.
Boat arrivals have risen sharply this week amid warm weather and calm seas. Francesco Esposito of the Italian navy yesterday warned: ‘The flow of migration is intensifying.’ Pictures taken by the Italian navy show the migrants’ panic and fear as the blue fishing boat capsized.
The patrol boat Bettica saw that the vessel was in difficulty and approached it to hand out life jackets but, before it could begin a rescue, the boat flipped over because of a sudden movement by the passengers.
A further 108 people were brought to safety in a separate operation later in the day.
Italy’s coastguard says 5,600 migrants were rescued on Monday and Tuesday alone, and officials fear numbers will increase as conditions continue to improve.
The latest arrivals bring the numbers rescued and transferred to Italy since the start of the year to nearly 40,000. The overwhelming majority have been economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa rather than refugees from Syria or Iraq. In the past two years, more than 320,000 boat migrants have arrived on Italian shores and an estimated 7,000 died in the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Aid agencies are worried that numbers attempting to make the crossing from North Africa could increase after the EU signed a £4.7billion deal with Turkey to stop people landing on the Greek islands.
Brussels officials have warned that 800,000 people are already gathered in Libya and hoping to come to Europe.
Numbers arriving into Greece have fallen dramatically but authorities are still struggling to cope with the 54,000 stranded there.
Yesterday Greek police moved hundreds out of a squalid camp on the border with Macedonia where 8,500 migrants have been living, on the second day of an operation likely to last a week. Some 600 were bussed from the tent city at Idomeni to new camps near Thessaloniki, about 50 miles south. Around 100 refused to enter the new centres and fled on foot. The Greece-Macedonia border is one of several in the Balkans closed since mid-February as countries on the migrant route try to halt the influx.
At its height, more than 12,000 people crammed into Idomeni, a camp that aid groups originally opened last year to accommodate just 2,500.
The International Organization for Migration says an estimated 190,000 have entered Europe by sea so far this year, arriving in Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain. More than 1,350 have died en route.
A deal between Turkey and the EU came into force in March which has dramatically reduced the flow of people to Greece.
Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to scrap the deal unless his country’s 80million citizens benefit from relaxed travel rules that make it easier for them to visit continental Europe. Bulgaria, which shares a land border with Turkey, has demanded that the EU start working on a Plan B in case the deal collapses.