A large ship took them to Greece.
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At least 500 migrants drowned after a shipwreck in the Mediterranean between Lybia and Italy.
The UN agency said last week’s disaster could be the worst maritime incident in the last 12 months.
The mass drowning drew expressions of sympathy from European leaders as the refugee crisis spiraled.
More than 170,000 people reached Europe from Libya in 2014, while 150,000 tried the same route in 2015.
“In the mad dash to start the deportations deal with Turkey, the European Union and Greece tossed rights to the wind, including for people who wanted to seek asylum”. And why, the root question, is so little being done to stop the wars, the persecution and the poverty that is driving so many people to the shores of Europe?
The Balkans route is now closed, and thousands of refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece. “The abusive deportations expose the fundamental flaws in the EU’s expedited mass returns to a country that can not be considered safe”.
The UNHRC’s William Spindler is expecting a fresh surge in the number of people undertaking such perilous journeys.
The EU-Turkey arrangement does little to address the longer and more unsafe sea routes from Egypt and Libya.
Spokesman William Spindler says the stories told by survivors are a reminder of what is occurring nearly daily in the Mediterranean.
“Bringing security is vital not just for the Libyan people, but for the region and for Europe”, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, after a weekend visit to Tripoli.
Deaths on the Libya-Italy route tend to be higher than the Turkey-Greece route because the boats are bigger and the distancefar greater. Last year, through the entire month of April, the IOM reported that more than 1,730 migrants died or disappeared.
Political chaos in Libya has helped fuel the flow of migrants; the country now has one of the world’s largest people-smuggling industries.
The Italian navy rescued 90 migrants from a dinghy on Wednesday, September 2, 2015, and transferred them onto a larger boat out at sea.
That was certainly the case this week. The probe was therefore meant to satisfactorily corroborate actual eyewitness accounts in the absence of official confirmation on numbers. As many as 200 among the refugees feared lost may have hailed from Somalia, according to Somalian government sources.
Aid agencies too were unable to confirm the incident.
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Members of the group say they initially left Libya on a boat with up to 200 people on board, and after sailing for several hours were ordered by smugglers to board a larger ship that was already carrying hundreds of others. According to IOM, about 30 people remained on the smaller boats while 10 more managed swim toward them. Also, the UNHCR team revealed that the 41 survivors comprise of 37 men, three women and a child.
