There they set sail in flimsy motorised rubber dinghies or rickety old fishing boats.
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The Mediterranean Sea is the world’s most deadly border area for migrants. According to the Italian coast guard, around 400 people were rescued, while 26 bodies were recovered from the sea so far.
As many as 200 people are still unaccounted for from a fishing boat that capsized off Libya’s coast Wednesday with hundreds of migrants aboard. In April, a fishing boat which reportedly had about 800 aboard overturned and sank as rescuers approached.
“It was a horrific sight”, said Juan Matias, coordinator of Doctors without Borders who was on the ship Dignity I, which also came to the assistance of the refugees. She was pulled from under the water by her father. The father, Mohammed, sat next to them.
“So it just shows that they’re not being treated very well from where they’re coming”.
Around 200 migrants are feared dead in the Mediterranean Sea after a boat carrying around 600 passengers has capsized off the coast of Libya.
There is little hope of finding anyone else alive.
Karl Stagno-Navarra, a journalist based in Valletta, Malta, told Al Jazeera that an Irish navy vessel confirmed that the boat capsized when the people on board rushed to one side when the LE Niamh got close to it.
People line up to enter a center for migrants after disembarking from the Italian Coast Guard ship Fiorillo in the harbor of Pozzallo, near Ragusa, Sicily, Italy, Friday, August 7, 2015.
The first shipwreck survivor to make it off the Irish rescue vessel and onto Italian soil is a baby, carried down the gangplank in an aid worker’s arms. Survivors estimated that 600 people had been on board.
“Some of the people are torn by grief”. They include those of four children.
Orlando, speaking on Italian television as hearses arrived to take the bodies away, called on European leaders to do more to prevent such disasters and to allow more refugees to re-settle in their countries.
“I think the important point to remember in all of this is had those 20 boats arrived, 200 boats or 2,000 boats would have followed them”, Dutton said.
Some migrants who fell into the water had life vests; others, struggling to swim, were tossed life vests by rescuers. “There have been some our bodies floating, so it was fairly a surprising scene”. One survivor, and not using a life vest, was noticed floating on his again. The puffy hood on the man’s soaked windbreaker appeared to have helped him stay afloat.
All the nationalities of the survivors weren’t instantly out there.
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Several Syrians were among those rescued, including a pregnant woman who at first appeared in danger of miscarriage. One in three refugees traveling by boat comes from Syria, with other main countries of origin including Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Nigeria.
