Hundreds missing after 2 boats capsize in Mediterranean Sea
ROME — Two wrecks of refugee ships in the Mediterranean have claimed as many as 245 lives, including those of at least five children, according to survivor accounts given to U.N. agencies and authorities in Sicily, where dozens of rescued migrants were taken.
Survivors of one wreck, some of them hospitalized in Pozzallo, Sicily, where they were being treated for hypothermia and exhaustion, told authorities who interviewed them that their traffickers had crammed about 130 to 140 people, apparently all from central African countries, into a motorized rubber dinghy designed to hold at most 20 people.
The dinghy started deflating on one end, the passengers quickly shifted their positions in the boat, and the craft tipped over, authorities said, based on numerous survivors’ descriptions.
The dinghy wasn’t equipped with any distress signaling equipment. The 50 or so survivors clung for hours to the wreckage of the dinghy until they were spotted by a patrol plane and rescued by a Danish cargo ship, which was dispatched to their aid by the Italian Coast Guard, which coordinates rescue operations.
One survivor is a Nigerian woman, whose 5-month-old baby died. The infant’s corpse was one of the few bodies so far recovered, authorities said.
Police in Sicily said in a statement that many of the survivors recounted that among the 80 or so who drowned was one of the smugglers who had been steering the boat.
Meanwhile, at its Geneva headquarters, the refugee agency said that one of its partner agencies, the International Medical Corps, reported a shipwreck on Sunday off the Libyan coast in which 163 people are missing and feared dead. The U.N. agency said one woman and six men were rescued by the Libyan Coast Guard.
Many of those who brave the risky central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy are refugees from Africa seeking to flee from conflicts, political persecution at home or to find better economic opportunities in Europe.
Overall, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday that more than 1,300 people have disappeared and are believed to have died this year while crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy, while roughly 43,000 refugees and asylum-seekers reached Italy.
The figure for the Mediterranean as a whole, including Greece, Cyprus and Spain, was 49,310 as of Sunday, according to the International Organization for Migration. For the same period last year, the total number of sea arrivals was far higher — 187,569. That was because about 155,000 arrived in Greece from Turkey, compared with only 5,555 this year.