700 Hundred Feared Dead After Boat Capsizes in Mediterranean

19 Apr, 2015

As many as 700 people were feared dead after a fishing boat packed with migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight in what officials said may be the Mediterranean’s worst disaster as thousands flee poverty and war to Europe.

Top officials in Europe, whose recently-downsized border protection program has been criticized by international aid groups, said urgent action was needed. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said foreign ministers would discuss the issue at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

If confirmed, the death toll would bring to 1,500 the total number of dead since the beginning of the year resulting from the flow of migrants seeking to flee insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Only last week, around 400 migrants were reported to have died attempting to reach Italy from Libya when their boat capsized.

On Sunday twenty eight people were rescued and 24 bodies recovered from the 20 meter-long vessel, which sank around 70 miles from the Libyan coast, south of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, the Italian coast guard said.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said later that around 50 people had been rescued of the 700 reported to be on board.

“They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water,” Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

French President Francois Hollande said the EU had to do more, telling Canal+ television that rescue and disaster prevention efforts needed “more boats, more over flights and a much more intense battle against people trafficking.”

Italian officials said 17 vessels from the navy and coast guard, merchant ships in the area and a Maltese patrol boat, as well as aircraft from the navy and coast guard, were involved in the search-and-rescue operation, which was being coordinated by the Italian coast guard in Rome.

There was still no decision on where the survivors and the bodies that had been recovered would be taken.

The boat is believed to have capsized when the migrants shifted to one side of the overcrowded vessel as a merchant ship approached.

Reuters 

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