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Feared drowning of 400 migrants raises alarms in Europe

Migrants on a Coast Guard dinghy arrive at the Sicilian Porto Empedocle harbor Monday. Italy’s Coast Guard helped save 144 migrants Monday from a capsized boat in the waters off Libya and spotted nine bodies. (Associated Press)
Colleen Barry Associated Press

MILAN – The feared drowning of 400 migrants in a shipwreck this week in the Mediterranean Sea – one of the deadliest such tragedies in the last decade – raised alarms Wednesday amid an unprecedented wave of migration toward Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

The U.N. refugee agency expressed shock at the scale of the deaths in Monday’s capsizing and renewed calls on European governments to redouble search and rescue efforts, while the International Organization for Migration maintained that the situation had reached “crisis proportions.”

The Mediterranean “has emerged as the most dangerous” of four major sea routes used by the world’s refugees and migrants, taken by 219,000 people last year, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.

The Italian Coast Guard rescued some 140 people off the coast of Libya on Monday and recovered nine bodies, but could see immediately from the size of the capsized smuggler’s boat that there had likely been hundreds more on board.

The rescue was made during a five-day surge that saw Italian ships save nearly 10,000 people at sea since Friday – an unprecedented rate in such a short period, according to Cmdr. Filippo Marini, a Coast Guard spokesman. The number is only likely to grow, with summer weather encouraging even more people fleeing poverty and conflict to make the perilous crossing.

Survivors of Monday’s shipwreck reported that as many as 550 people were on board, according to aid workers.

“Of course this is an estimate. No one who travels knows exactly the number. They don’t get a ticket that says: No. 550,” said Barbara Molinario, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman in Italy.

Accounts by survivors, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, indicate the ship capsized when men on the upper deck rushed to wave down a ship they believed to be a rescue vessel, said IOM spokesman Joel Millman in Geneva.

“Many were waving and gesticulating to get attention and that caused the vessel to capsize, with the speculation that women and children who were below deck were drowned instantly,” Millman said.

The rescued migrants arrived Wednesday at the southern Italian port of Corigliano, where aid workers dressed in white protective jumpsuits, gloves and masks worked to process them.

A precise accounting of the number of dead will never be known: The search operation was called off after the recovery of just nine bodies due to the depth of the sea, meaning there will be no body count to verify survivors’ accounts, as is nearly always the case.

“For all of these things, we rely on the consistency of the reports we get, but we know these people have been traumatized and through terrible things,” Millman said.

The UNHCR estimates 3,500 migrants died in the Mediterranean last year, up from 600 in 2013.

So far this year, the number of dead or missing at sea is 900, according to the UNHCR, compared with just 17 over the same time last year. Typically, the arrival of migrants making the perilous journey goes up in April as the weather improves, increasing concerns about the coming months.