The relentless wave of departures from north Africa means often rescuers have to deal with several disasters at once, and the nearest vessel is forced to do its best at saving all those in difficulty – sometimes at night – whether or not it is equipped to deal with capsizes. In response, the first ship sent to rescue was the Irish Navy vessel, Lé Niamh.
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A capsized boat killed at least 25 migrants Wednesday in the Mediterranean Sea.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have lost their lives, the survivors and the rescuers for whom this is an extremely hard operation”, Coveney said.
The Italian Coast Guard and the UN refugee agency UNHCR said about 400 people had been rescued and 25 bodies had been recovered so far, although it was still not clear exactly how many people were on board.
Australia’s Department of Immigration routinely does not comment on “on water” operations, so Dutton’s announcement provides the most complete picture to date of the scale of the turn-back operations.
The Dignity 1 vessel rescued 94 people from a rubber boat, including 17 woman and a five-year-old boy.
If that estimate holds, as many as 200 migrants inside the boat might have drowned.
Also involved in Wednesday’s rescue were an Italian vessel and a boat operated by Doctors Without Borders.
“The team on the #Dignity1 can confirm that there have tragically been many deaths but does not have figures at this stage”, it said in a tweet. Italian vessels continued to search the area on Thursday, a coastguard spokesman said.
The Italian air force dropped life rafts into the sea in a desperate attempt to rescue the migrants.
He said he was disappointed that EU ministers had failed late last month to agree on how to distribute a total of 40,000 mostly Syrian and Eritrean migrants from overstretched Italy and Greece.
The eastern route is shorter and IOM said that traffickers taking people to Italy tended to use more unseaworthy vessels. Based on the latest data given by the global Organization for Migration (IOM), this year over 2,000 individuals have died trying to cross the Mediterranean, majority hoping to land in Italy.
“They were only 15 miles away from Libya so probably at the very beginning of their journey, and when they spotted a rescue boat, panicked, moved to the side and the boat capsized very tragically”.
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According to the Associated Press, such migrants, who are from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and some parts of Asia, travel to Libya to flee war, persecution and poverty.
