On Wednesday, after a boat capsized due to high momentum about 100 people remain missing as until Sunday, said Federico Fossi, spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency.
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She said: “The first boat, carrying some 500 people, was reportedly towing the second, which was carrying another 500”. Several bodies have been recovered out of three shipewrecks that have happened on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday but then there were other incidents, like for example, four women have died on a boat because of suffocation and burns and we have an orphan of nine months only and several other people have fallen off the boat.
One of 45 bodies of migrants recovered by the Italian military ship Vega during a search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea.
“It’s time that Europe had the courage to offer safe alternatives that allow these people to come without putting their own lives or those of their children in danger”, Tommaso Fabri of MSF Italy said. As well, the boats were believed to be carrying families of Eritreans, Sudanese and other West Africans.
The vessel began to take on water, according to accounts by survivors collected by Save the Children on Sunday.
Save the Children said most of the people on board were from Eritrea and included many women and children.
That motorless boat and being tugged by another vessel. At that point, the commander of the first smuggler’s boat ordered the tow rope to be cut to the sinking boat.
The Italian news agency ANSA said about 95 migrants were transferred to centers in Bari, southern Italy, and Catania, Sicily, for repatriation.
Italian police said survivors identified the commander of the tow boat as a 28-year-old Sudanese man, who has been arrested and faces possible charges for the deaths.
The unidentified child died in one of the three big tragedies involving migrant boats last week that left more than 700 people dead, coinciding with an increasing number of people who are attempting the perilous crossing to Europe as the weather improves.
The tragic event took place almost 30 to 40 miles off the coast of Libya, according to the Italian Coast Guard.
Migrants crossing the Mediterranean have risked their lives on ill-fated boats.
“The number of women arriving pregnant or with newborns appears to be on the rise, with many saying they have been raped in Libya”, said Paola Mazzoni, from the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, to The Telegraph.
According to Sunday data from the UNHCR, this year there have been 46,714 sea migrant arrivals in Italy, compared to 47,463 in January-May 2015.
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The three boats involved in the shipwrecks were believed to be filled with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa countries, including Nigeria, Gambia, Somalia, Ivory Coast and Guinea.
