Deadly week for EU migrants
Officials: More than 200 die trying to cross the Mediterranean
BRUSSELS — At least 239 migrants are believed to have drowned this week in two shipwrecks off the coast of Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said Thursday, adding to the toll in what was already the deadliest year on record in the Mediterranean Sea.
Survivor accounts suggest that two crowded boats broke up just off the Libyan coast Wednesday, said Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The 31 survivors were taken Thursday to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which has become a rescue hub amid an ever-deadlier crisis as migrants depart Africa’s northern shores trying to reach Europe.
The reports from the survivors could not be independently confirmed, but it is common for migrant ships to be filled far beyond capacity, and hundreds have perished in past sinkings. If true, the latest shipwrecks bring the toll of dead and missing in the Mediterranean to 4,220 this year, the highest on record, Sami said.
“This is an absolutely appalling figure,” she said.
According to Sami, the 29 survivors of the first wreck said they capsized after wooden planks at the bottom of the rubber dinghy broke apart several hours after departing Libya around 3 a.m. Wednesday. Pregnant women and at least six children were on board, survivors told the UNHCR, but no children were saved in the rescue, which took place about 25 miles off Libya’s coast. One woman lost her 2-monthold baby, Sami said, and 12 bodies were recovered.
The survivors said they were in the cold waters for hours before being rescued about 3 p.m. Wednesday. They said more than 140 people were aboard the boat.
Two survivors of a second shipwreck were rescued in a separate operation, Sami said. They said at least 120 had been on board their boat, which had problems immediately upon setting out and broke apart off the Libyan coast around 5 a.m. Wednesday.
The remaining passengers are believed to have drowned, Sami said. No further rescue operations are being performed at the location of those shipwrecks.
“I am deeply saddened by another tragedy on the high seas. . . . So many lives could be saved through more resettlement and legal pathways to protection,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said in a statement Thursday. “The Mediterranean is a deadly stretch of sea for refugees and migrants, yet they still see no other option but to risk their lives to cross it.”
Most of the migrants appear to have come from sub-Saharan Africa, Sami said, but she said details were still being checked. She did not immediately know which agency carried out the rescue.
The European Union is conducting a search-andrescue operation in the western Mediterranean that is temporarily being offered logistical help from the NATO military alliance.