The weekend saw the worst disaster of its kind as hundreds of migrants are believed to have perished as they attempted to cross the mediterranean from Libya to Italy in order to seek refuge.
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Numerous bodies were clearly motionless, she said by phone from the middle of the Mediterranean.
The announcement follows the deadliest week of 2016 for refugees at sea.
The UN refugee agency spokesman William Spindler said this year is proving to be “particularly deadly” on the Mediterranean, with some 2,510 lives lost compared to 1,855 over the same period a year ago. No one knows his or her name yet.
A haunting photo of a baby migrant who appears to have drowned at sea is the latest image to highlight the plight of refugees trying to reach safety. So far this year, 203,981 people have made the journey on the Mediterranean.
From May 1 to 29, 18,788 migrants have landed in Italy, according to figures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Smugglers setting off from Libya, or migrants appointed temporary “captains” by the traffickers, sound the alarm the moment their boats get into worldwide waters.
“The situation is really worsening in the last week”, said Di Benedetto. It involved a fishing boat that was carrying hundreds of refugees.
UNHCR cited unconfirmed accounts that smugglers might be trying to “maximize income” before the Ramadan holy month, which begins in the first week of June.
Many people are setting sail from Libya, a route now preferred by smugglers after the European Union took a hardened stance and closed off the Balkan and Turkish routes through the Aegean Sea.
“I want to tell the world this way is unsafe for us. We have also been seeing an increase in arrivals of unaccompanied children”, Spindler added. UNHCR says more than 700 had drowned.
“The children were crying and the women”, said Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean. In the chaos that followed some swam for their lives but many remained trapped inside the ship. Spindler noted such estimates are an inexact science, and said his agency’s figures tend to be “conservative”. With my right arm I hugged a baby girl from Sudan, very young, probably only a six- or seven-month-old girl.
In a third shipwreck on Friday, Sami said 135 people were rescued, 45 bodies were recovered and an unknown numbers of migrants were still missing.
The aid group said it helped save about 600 people off the Libyan coast.
Once safe on land at the Sicilian port of Porto Empedocle, those rescued smiled with relief. “What happens is as soon as they depart from shore they call for rescuers and then rescue services come and rescue them”, Spindler told a news briefing.
That changed in 2015 when about a million migrants and refugees, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis who arrived in Greece from Turkey, took the easier overland route to western and northern Europe through Greece’s border with Macedonia.
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A joint report published by Europol and Interpol this month said there were around 800,000 migrants in Libya waiting to attempt the journey across the Mediterranean.
