Survivor says hundreds went down with smuggler’s ship

ROME – A smuggler’s boat crammed with hundreds of people overturned off Libya’s coast as rescuers approached, causing what could be the Mediterranean’s deadliest known migrant tragedy and intensifying pressure on the European Union on Sunday to finally meet demands for decisive action.

Survivor accounts of the number aboard varied, with the Italian coast guard saying the capsized boat had a capacity for “hundreds” of people. Italian prosecutors said a Bangladeshi survivor flown to Sicily for treatment told them 950 people were aboard, including hundreds who had been locked in the hold by smugglers. Earlier, authorities said a survivor told them 700 migrants were on board.

It was not immediately clear if they were referring to the same survivor, and Premier Matteo Renzi said Italian authorities were “not in a position to confirm or verify” how many were on board when the boat set out from Libya.

Eighteen ships joined the rescue effort, but only 28 survivors and 24 bodies had been pulled from the water by nightfall, Renzi said.

These small numbers make more sense if hundreds of people were locked in the hold, because with so much weight down below, “surely the boat would have sunk,” said Gen. Antonino Iraso, of the Italian border police, which has deployed boats in the operation.

Prosecutor Giovanni Salvi told the Associated Press by phone from the city of Catania that a survivor from Bangladesh described the situation on the fishing boat to prosecutors who interviewed him in a hospital. The man said about 300 people were in the hold, locked in there by the smugglers, when the vessel set out. He said of the 950 who set out aboard the doomed boat, about 200 were women and several dozen were children.

Salvi stressed there was no confirmation yet of the man’s account and that the investigation was ongoing.

Iraso said the sea in the area is too deep for divers, suggesting the final toll may never be known. The sea off Libya runs as deep as 3 miles or more.

“How can it be that we daily are witnessing a tragedy?” said Renzi, who strategized with his top ministers ahead of today’s European Union meeting in Luxembourg, where foreign ministers scrambled to add stopping the smugglers to their agenda.

Resurgent right-wing political parties have made a rallying cry out of a rising tide of illegal migration. So far this year, 35,000 asylum seekers and migrants have reached Europe and more than 900 are known to have died trying.

With Sunday’s tragedy, demands for decisive action were going mainstream, as authorities from France, Spain, Germany and Britain joined calls for a unified response.

“Europe can do more and Europe must do more,” said Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament. “It is a shame and a confession of failure how many countries run away from responsibility and how little money we provide for rescue missions.”

Europe must mobilize “more ships, more overflights by aircraft,” French President Francois Hollande told French TV Canal+ on Sunday. “Words won’t do anymore,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told a political rally.

Renzi said he, too, wants action, but he rejected calls by some Italian lawmakers for a naval blockade. That would only “wind up helping the smugglers” since military ships would be there to rescue any migrants, and they wouldn’t be able to return passengers to chaos and violence in Libya.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the latest tragedy is an urgent reminder “of the critical need for a robust search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean,” in a statement released late Sunday by his spokesman. Ban said the Mediterranean has become “the world’s deadliest route used by asylum seekers and migrants.”

Meanwhile Sunday, rescuers were “checking who is alive and who is dead” in an area littered with debris and oil from the capsized ship. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose island nation joined the effort, said only 50 survived, and called it the “biggest human tragedy of the last few years.”

The 66-foot vessel may have overturned because migrants rushed to one side of the craft late Saturday night when they saw an approaching Portuguese-flagged container ship, the King Jacob, which was sent to the area by Italy’s Coast Guard. The ship’s crew “immediately deployed rescue boats, gangway, nets and life rings,” a spokesman for its owner said.

Asked whether migrants rushed to one side as the Portuguese vessel pulled close, Iraso told Sky TG24 TV that “the dynamics aren’t clear. But this is not the first time that has happened.”

Meanwhile, about 100 migrants rescued by a different merchant vessel in a separate operation were being brought to the Sicilian port of Pozzallo late Sunday night, authorities said.