It further estimates that some 298.474 migrants reached European shores.
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A man reacts as rescue workers carry the body of a victim on a stretcher after a boat carrying migrants capsized off Egypt’s coast, in Al-Beheira, Egypt, September 22, 2016.
Egyptian authorities have arrested at least four people in connection with the deaths of a group of refugees whose boat recently capsized in the Mediterranean.
A survivor whose comments appeared in a video posted online said the migrants had been told that about 200 people would be on board but the smugglers had added another 50, causing the boat to founder.
Egypt’s military said its coastguard had busted a people-trafficking operation and led a life-saving rescue operation.
Dozens of the passengers’ families gathered in front of the Rashid police station, as some did not find the names of their deceased relatives.
“I am not going to leave until I see Mohamed”, Ratiba Ghonim wailed. “It is his destiny to leave yesterday and come back dead today”.
“I had a bag in my hand, I kept struggling against the water while the water struggled against me until they finally saw me and waved back with a white shirt”.
The Egyptian Army has said that it was “an illegal immigration attempt”.
Experts say smugglers in Egypt mostly use old fishing vessels, stuffed way beyond capacity both below and above deck. Local official Alaa Osman from Beheira province said the migrants were from several African countries.
The tragedy comes months after the EU’s border agency Frontex warned that growing numbers of migrants bound for Europe were turning to Egypt as a departure point for the perilous sea journey.
Earlier that month, a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank off the Greek island of Crete and the bodies 104 migrants washed up on a beach in Libya. In June, a boat capsized near Sicily, drowning at least 169 migrants.
Numerous refugees using the central Mediterranean route – which runs roughly from Libya or other north African countries to Italy – are from Nigeria, Eritrea and Gambia, according to the International Organization for Migration.
More than 12,000 migrants arrived in Italy from Egypt between January and September, compared to 7,000 in the same period a year ago.
More than a million migrants entered Europe past year, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in countries including Syria, Iraq and Eritrea.
More and more people have been trying to cross Mediterranean Sea this year. “Seven people were on board”.
He made an abortive effort to travel to Greece a year ago. “They paid money to go and die”, he said.
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“The poverty that they are living in is what is pushing them”. The conflicts they are fleeing are usually instigated by the very European and non-European countries they seek to finally settle in.
