At least 117 people have drowned after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Libya.
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100 bodies were recovered and over 340 people were reportedly rescued on 3 June from a sinking migrant boat carrying a “significant number” of people in the Mediterranean Sea, south of Crete.
More than 2,500 migrants have drowned in the Mediterranean this year attempting to cross into Europe, the United Nations refugee agency said this week, with many from war-torn Syria.
More and more people are trying to cross to Italy from the African coastline in recent weeks as the weather improves, particularly from Libya, where people-traffickers operate with relative impunity.
All but a few were from African countries, said spokesman Mohammed Al Mosrati.
In the past 10 days alone, the 2016 death toll for migrants attempting to make the central Mediterranean crossing – from North Africa to Europe, typically via Italy and its outer islands – has already doubled. “70 per cent of them were women plus six children”, said Khames al-Boussefi, media coordinator to the Libyan Red Crescent. Libyan coast guards found an empty boat drifting on Thursday, Libyan navy Colonel Ayoub Gassim said, adding it was possible the vessel had capsized a day earlier.
Greece’s coast guard said the roughly 25-meter (82-foot) vessel had been carrying an undetermined number of people when it was located half-sunk in global waters. The migration organization said that the capsized boat was believed to have been carrying 700 people and was thought to have left from Egypt. Others were to be taken to Egypt, Turkey and Malta. “There is a huge rescue effort underway”.
Elinor Raikes of the International Rescue Committee said such incidents show “that desperate people will continue to attempt these treacherous journeys until adequate legal alternatives to safety are established”.
Under the arrangement, anyone arriving on a Greek island, whose application for asylum is rejected, is deported back to Turkey.
But the number of people using that route has reduced to a trickle after the EU-Turkey deal, under which migrants landing on the islands can be sent back to Turkey, as well as the deployment of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ships in the Aegean.
Recently, the European Union committee charged with overseeing the end of migrant smuggling in the Mediterranean said it is proving to be hard.
According to the agreement, Turkey will take in all irregular refugees as of April 4, while on the same date resettlement of Syrians in Turkey to the European Union states was launched.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported Tuesday that at least 880 migrants and refugees had died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past week.
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They were washed up on a beach near the city of Zuwara, from which many unseaworthy boats are believed to have set out for Italy packed with migrants.
